


Do Not Want

by CampionSayn



Series: A Little Less Blood [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Animated), DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, Gen, Hating This--Sequel, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, M/M, Multi, Multiverse Fusion, Scar Fetish, past trauma, reformed!AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 45,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3251942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let us consider Harley two years after leaving Joker, rebuilding her life (as much as she could) and rejoining the Arkham staff. Let's also think about her ongoing issues with everything else. Like being courted by another loon, being a borderline mentor to very weird teenagers and dealing with the inevitable backlash of her choices. Told in snapshots, but with feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Do Not Want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crosshair](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Crosshair), [Hebi R](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Hebi+R), [Herotales](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Herotales), [angelvan105](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=angelvan105), [Twilight_Shadow_Songs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilight_Shadow_Songs/gifts).



_-:-_  
Life is a game, play it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it.  
-Mother Theresa.

* * *

 

 

She didn't like to be touched anymore.  
  
That is not to say that she rejects touch altogether—not at all—but it has to be initiated by her own hand or not in the least.  
  
There are certain times, of course, where someone might inadvertently brush up against her ( _an elbow in her side while out drinking cocktails because Leland thinks it’s good to celebrate a good day at work in a more friendly environment—with karaoke and no smoking allowed—than a suspicious place down by the docks or near Crime Alley where it was considered lucky if the pint glasses were clean; a hand on the shoulder that turns out to be Selina or Bruce Wayne that spotted her across the duck pond in Robinson Park and they just had to say hello; a prod of a sneakered toe against her ankle when her downstairs neighbor—Jason Todd—passes her on the stairwell to ask her if she has any spare cigarettes or some change he could borrow_ ) and get away with it. But mostly, these occasions are still met with annoyed looks are derision and sneering.  
  
Creeper found that, still, if he was to pursue Dr. Harley Quinzel, it would have to be entirely without making any move that could be deemed unsafe on her own person. She’d tossed him over her shoulder that one time he’d snuck up on her outside her apartment and landed a light peck on her cheek, after all. Those flowers he was to give her had been ruined, to boot.  
  
As Jack Ryder, he had to satisfy his curiosity of her by setting up situations where he could just appear next to her in a bar on her days off, or in the Laundromat she occasionally went to when the laundry machines in her apartment building were out of commission; he’d just sit or stand next to her with his own drink or his own laundry and talk to her without making her annoyed in some way.  
  
_(“I don’t hate him, you know,” she confided in Creeper one night when she had almost gotten mugged and he had swooped down to help her out; an unnecessary thing, seeing as she just lifted her leg and kicked the thief in the stomach so hard Creeper and Jack—both personalities in their own ways—could tell she had broken a few of the man’s ribs._  
  
_This had become a sort of go-between of the two of them. He asked her questions until she told him to fuck off and then when he saw her again in his big feathered boa and his speedo, it was with the answers he had asked._  
  
_He looked at her with his half-crazed, half-sane eyes—such a giant step up from Joker himself—and made a sound for her to continue. Jack liked for her to delve into the details of her life while Creeper just liked to hear her talk ( **it was better than hearing a mermaid sing, Creeper crooned to Jack when the reporter was in control** ) and talk._  
  
_She continued to walk the back alleys while he stooped and capered beside or above or behind her; dainty hands with the chipped fingernails stuffed in her black coat’s pockets, “You and Bats and the rest always seem to be under the impression that I hate Joker now, but I don’t. He doesn't hate me either.”_  
  
_“Kinda hard to believe when you and he always try and kill each other these days, beautiful,” Creeper smirked, his hands tightening on the edge of the roof he was bounding on above her like a squirrel after it’s seen another squirrel that doesn't belong; his anger wasn't palpable, exactly, but it showed in how his fingers and tendons made his gloves crunch against stone._  
  
_She shrugged as she turned into another alley that that he knew would lead to that refrigerated building where she would say hello to detective Renee Montoya’s little brother, tease the young man for a little while with how scary he still thought she was, and then buy some weird meat products for her hyenas and herself; and he knew she would pay extra. It was a force of habit Jack believed she had developed out of guilt while Creeper just thought it was her way of apologizing for making Benny Montoya sweat in her presence._  
  
_“We do want to kill each other, but not out of hate. More like…if we don’t try and win one over each other, we’ll stop being able to function and have a breakdown. Jack’s too vain to be able to deal with that, and more than one massive breakdown a decade is too much for me to handle. So when he escapes and tries to screw with me, we fight. Plain and simple.”)_

* * *

 

 

There was blood all over the hallway Joan had been stuck in with Joker for the better part of five agonizingly terrifying moments and walking down it again on her way to meet Commissioner Gordon and that new detective in the MCU (Anna…Ramstein? Ramone? Ramirez?) to take her statement of how Joker had gotten out this time was not something she wanted to be doing. Stepping over some spatters of blood while her hands were tucked in her whitecoat to prevent anyone from seeing how she was shaking made her feel more queasy than she already was.  
  
The two police individuals stood at the end of the hall looking a bit too calm for her liking, but she greeted the white haired Gordon with a nod and just lightly looked over the young Latina female detective that, up close, did appear to be showing a bit too much of the whites of her eyes. Ramirez didn't want to be there and Joan knew that Gordon had brought her because these situations happened all the time and the woman detective would need to get used to it sooner rather than later. Like trying to get used to taking care of feral dogs that, even though they had been collared and vaccinated, still always managed to piss on a wall inside the house or claw their way out from under a fence and into the freedom of the city.  
  
“Commissioner Gordon, Detective Ramirez, it’s good that you got here so quickly.”  
  
“Not as fast as we would have liked,” Gordon muttered to Joan lowly, eyeing his new detective as Joan starting leading them down the halls with blood caking them and towards the room at the front of the asylum that was kept to house all the camera monitors. They needed to have the footage of Joker getting out and the sound footage incase he’d said anything, while cornering Joan and after being confronted by Harley, that could tell them what his next move might be once he got into Gotham City instead of the suburb of Summerset that Arkham sat upon ( _basically the same place, but Summerset was a district full of half natural plants and didn't suffer from as much pollution, what with being on a hill just overlooking the ocean_ ) in its own dreariness and misery.  
  
“It’s basically straight forward in the way he got out,” Joan explained as they made the way down the halls, her hands shaking just a little less as the adrenaline in her veins was thinning out and the tips of her fingers touched at the spare change in her pockets ( _three pennies, all disgustingly dark with age and sweat stains from human fingers; one quarter that was less than a year old and still clean, which was a miracle in Gotham and a couple of Canadian coins she never seemed to remember to get rid of_ ) to make herself calm down further—not looking at the blood again, “He somehow got someone to smuggle in the metal holder of a pen and he used it to pick the lock to his sell like he did six months ago.”  
  
“I’m guessing he swallowed it in his lunch?” Gordon asked, hand steering Ramirez away from the wall so she didn't brush against the concrete that was cracked from a weight smashing against it and blooming outward.  
  
“Of course,” Joan nodded, punching in her personal number across the digits of the access panel to the camera room, fingernail making the keys tap hard like bird beaks snapping against glass, “And we’re having reconstruction on the floor he ambushed me in, so he got his hands on one of the power tools that the workers neglected to lock up on their way to their three hour lunch. You’ll want to speak with them.”  
  
They all entered the room, one of the screens showcasing the hall of the most infamous patients as they whispered to each other about the hour’s earlier events ( _the Riddler was close to his newest parole hearing and was being quiet, but looked like his face would turn purple if Ivy spoke another ill word about the power equipment and the tussle Joker had with his ex-wife trying to defend Leland from going through some agonizing surgery_ ,) with a few screens recording the lunch room, the shower room, the grounds outside the asylum.  
  
The one Joan looked away from and that Gordon glared at while Ramirez looked sick to her stomach showed the recording of the events just before Joker broke out of a window and left Joan and Harley in the hallway with one of them clutching the right side of her face and her right shoulder. Blood smears on the floor made the three nickel plated, two inch long nails scattered about look like shards of glass in a ‘50s noir film.

* * *

 

 

“Personally, I think you could pull off the one-eyed pirate look.”  
  
There was very little emotion Jack Ryder could feel around Jason Todd except for discomfort and astonishment. The kid couldn't be older than eighteen and he smoked like chimney, swore like a sailor, and wore clothes around his apartment (hell, around the _**apartment building**_ ) only because Harley and their neighbor Stephanie Brown yelled at him to do so each morning. And yet, he was more comfortable around Harley--saying whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and didn't care if he made anyone else uncomfortable when he was in her apartment in nothing but his boxers and a Japanese see-through kimono ( _he wore it like rock and roll royalty and Creeper chirped friendly remarks about whenever they saw each other from the apartment windows_ )—than anyone than maybe Creeper and Batman had the right to be.  
  
Especially when she was cutting open a frozen deer carcass in her living room, nothing on her but grey Hipster panty-shorts and a black sports bra and ( _Jack felt sorry about it and Creeper just kept making jokes about depth perception_ ) thick white gauze taped over her right shoulder, her collarbone and fore side of her face just above her teeth. Doctor Thompkins had taped up her face as best she could, but head wounds caused by two nails in Harley’s cheekbone, one just in the crook of her eye near the bridge of her nose and two more just above her eyebrows were absolutely certain to bleed for a good long time.  
  
Jack had chosen to sit in between Harley’s hyenas, because the entire apartment had the windows open and the heat was turned off in the middle of dead winter to cool down the fever she had gotten from a slight infection along her shoulder from one of the nails that had been pulled out and been discovered to be covered in mold, and he couldn't have been happier to have made that choice as the glare Harley directed at Jason seemed to drop the temperature further to well below zero.  
  
Jason didn’t even flinch and the goosebumps along his shown skin didn't multiply.  
  
“I can also pull off looking like the villain in ‘Hellraiser,’ but we both know how uncomfortable that was to look at while I was in the hospital, Mister Todd,” Harley snarked calmly, leveling her meat hatchet from the kitchen into the shoulder of the deer hanging from the ceiling; the dead animal’s tongue a strawberry red and touching the floor as if it were still breathing and trying to taste fresh bark in a maple forest.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by avataraandy at deviantart. I commissioned this and it came through wonderfully. Still weeping a little.


	2. Touch of Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're leaving Arkham and you don't intend to come back, you're likely to get on hell of a good-bye.

_-:-_  
I know a cat named Easter who said,  
“Will you ever learn? It’s just an empty cage if you kill the bird.”  
-Crucify, by Tori Amos.

* * *

 

 

“You’re not serious. You can’t be serious.”  
  
“I’m dead serious. You don’t want Eddie to ever come back here and I want a new coffee machine. Everybody gets what they want if this works.”  
  
“Except Jeremiah, of course. What does he say about this?”  
  
“That’s the beauty. He _doesn’t_. He’ll be in Metropolis telling Strikers Island’s mental ward that it would be a poor choice to let any of their cases over here and I’ll have already filled out the paperwork for the new machine. By the time he gets back, Eddie will be gone and the nice and shiny new machine will be stationed in the lounge like a newborn baby.”  
  
“How come I don’t believe you?”

* * *

 

 

“Why are we standing in the freezing cold behind a bullet proof glass type shelter the police would use when they aren't sure if they can turn off a bomb?”  
  
Joan continued her shivering in her thin white doctor’s coat that didn't even _attempt_ to block out the freezing degrees of winter wind sweeping around her and Edward Nigma as they, indeed, stood behind a bomb shelter ( _there was no way she could understand why it was called such a thing when it was basically constructed like a professional soccer ball net that a goalie—or for that matter, a bomb specialist—looked into instead of blocked_ ) in the back of Arkham Asylum.  
  
In front of them by about twenty feet, was a red X spray painted in the inch of snow that had fallen the night before; the lining of it a little squiggly from the wind and moisture of the melted coloring, but still an undeniable X.  
  
“Harley wanted to see you off with some sort of surprise,” Joan chattered, teeth clacking and fingers tugging on the dark blue yarn scarf Harley had given her before heading off to prepare the intended surprise for the graduate of Arkham’s system. She tried to sound amiable and cheerful, but even she could hear how fake that sounded against the wind whistling and…  
  
Footsteps and muttering?  
  
“…And I realize that our grounds look less than keen on the eyes, but it is winter time and as soon as the spring thaw comes—Doctor Leland?”  
  
Joan scrunched her face inward and tried not to scream like she would if she had a sofa throw-pillow to stuff over her face before she wiped her pretty features of such unbridled, unfortunate emotions and turned her head from looking at Eddie or the red X to find not only Doctor Jeremiah Arkham heading over towards them, but Bruce Wayne ( _looking charming in his probably awesomely heated black winter coat and white scarf around his neck, but frowning a little at the surrounding area_ ) and—since things couldn't get any BETTER from where Joan was standing with Eddie—Lex Luthor with his chauffeur/body guard/probably hate lay Mercy Graves. All of them seemed to be wearing the normal reaction to seeing Joan and Eddie doing something so strange behind a mental institute.  
  
Well, maybe not Jeremiah. He looked sick to his stomach and a little like he could probably guess what was happening as he actually sprinted the rest of the way over to Joan and Eddie and did the proper thing by not standing IN FRONT of the bomb shelter. The others got the hint and followed at basically the same pace.  
  
“What is this, Joan?” Jeremiah questioned, directly to the point and absently glancing from Eddie to the red X to his guests and then back to Joan who tried to imagine turning into a puddle of water that would freeze like a clear sheet of glass and turn back to normal in the spring like some fairy over in Russia or the actually freezing cold Greenland, “Mr. Nigma was supposed to be discharged an hour ago. Why is he still here?”  
  
Joan glared at the obvious way Jeremiah spoke of Eddie as if he wasn’t even there, and when she opened her mouth to scold him ( _scold her boss—what a wonderful thing she never would have done before Harley had come back to practicing at Arkham and they had become sort-of friends again_ ) when she found Luthor speaking; his cold eyes, that Joan had never liked when she saw his press conferences on international news stations, looking over Eddie like he was some sort of rare bird or an overly large horse he could see in the circus, “Nigma being released, Jeremiah, really? I would have assumed that after his last break out you would have kept him in longer than a year.”  
  
Eddie’s shoulders ruffled at the precise stitching that allowed his irritation to show directly at the billionaire. The grey suit that Joan had given him as a mental asylum graduate accentuated his meager figure in the best way possible, but started ruffling at the edges when his internal self caused strain on his muscles—the muscles along his arms and down to his fingers tightening like he would actually hit the tan, pompous ass. He was aware, however, that while mentally they were near equals (much to his chagrin,) emotionally and in terms of outright vanity of the self, and, of course, physiologically, they were a little squicked in comparison.   
  
He didn't rise to the bait.  
  
Rather, he looked up at the roof of Arkham where, from his perspective, someone was wheeling out a large square to the edge of the where the roof ended and cold air began and he kept his mouth shut as Bruce Wayne ( _will wonders never cease at what fate will throw at a person on any given day_ ) opened his mouth. Eddie quietly made sure that he and Joan were completely inside the shelter and there was no way that the large square would squish them.  
  
“Now, now, Lex, let’s keep in mind that Mister Nigma has had a slightly more experimental doctor for the last year and he hasn't made even an attempt to leave the grounds without permission,” the blue eyed brunette smiled at the Metropolis mogul ( _there was ice running through him as he did it, but appearances had to be kept in the daylight hours and—as much as Dick and Tim joked about it—a fake smile wasn't going to break his pretty complexion_ ) while trying to show Eddie his (moderate) support by stepping closer by a foot or so and giving the ginger a little nod, “And anyway, his last incident outside these walls wasn't as dangerous as it could have been. It only really endangered Batman and, if you believe in what you hear from the Daily Planet or the Gotham Gazette, it was just another… Uh, what’s tha—“  
  
Everyone looked curiously at what Bruce was pointing at in the snow, which had been dropped off of the roof before he finished his sentence.  
  
A large balloon-like thing had landed directly on the red X in the snow and made a little ‘plop’ sound on impact. It jiggled once, almost giving off the sound a person might hear when they jumped on a waterbed, but didn't do anything else. It was about the same size of a professional grade basketball, but looked like it had been dipped in a painter’s vat full of nasty blue-grey water.  
  
Joan tried not to flinch when everyone but she and Doctor Arkham himself looked up at the now much larger shadow of the square Eddie had spotted. All of them also didn't bother to cover their ears when a voice yelled down at them (probably through a bullhorn) with a suspiciously gleeful drawl, “LOOK OUT BELLOW!!”

* * *

 

 

 

Exactly two pictures had been taken of Eddie when he had left Arkham, two months previous.  
  
One had him in a nice, almost fashionable, Victorian pose outside of the gates of Arkham; his back to the camera while wearing the gift of a green bowler hat and holding the black gentleman’s walking stick he had received from Harley that were meant to compliment Joan’s gift of the jacket Eddie had started to wear almost every day to the new office he had bought a week after his release. The picture showed him looking up at the gates and waving goodbye in an almost David Bowie fashion that his new secretary loved to death. The print of the photo was colored a lovely bright black, white and grey, except for the hat, which had been treated digitally to show the green.  
  
He kept that particular photo above the door to his office so that people/clients-sent-to-him-on-recommendation could only see it on their way out. It was meant to instill confidence in him, he supposed. Mister Wayne had suggested it was a good promotional tool, but Eddie himself didn't see it.  
  
The other picture was something Eddie himself could really enjoy because it was, in his _occasionally_ humble opinion, something that was, in a way, very beautiful without being too complicated. He had it in two sizes; one was for his wallet for when he was feeling down on himself or like he was slipping back into insanity and he just had to open up his leather money holder and look at it so that he felt a whole lot better ( _like a lizard crawling out of a cave and into glossy morning light when it was dead tired of eating insects that thrived on nothing but bat droppings and piss and wanted something like a grasshopper or a ladybug_ ) in a minute or two. The other size was just big enough for a framed picture that could sit up on his desk so that he could see it and could just flip it face down if anybody came in to talk to him.  
  
In that picture was him standing in the background as little more than a fuzzy backdrop figure looking quite amused at the main figure in the frame.  
  
Harley, much to Joan and Doctor Arkham’s severe agitation and panic, had dropped the coffee maker from the staff lounge that never, ever worked for more than three days at a time off of the asylum roof with the help of her students ( _or ducklings as the blonde liked to call them when they followed her around the asylum taking notes and listened to the way she barked at them instructions and theories and how their paperwork on certain patients they were treating sucked so very hard)_ and a workman’s dolly cart. The machine had landed atop the round sphere planted in the snow that had, apparently, been filled with confetti and glitter in all the colors of green Eddie could really remember.   
  
The shelter Eddie and the doctors and the other guests had been behind came in quite handy as the machine hit the ground and smashed in all directions, exploding pieces of plastic buttons that requested mocha or French vanilla or Irish cream and springs and water tubes and whatever else made up worthless coffee machines that had been forced to commit suicide like so many devices bought from Acme by Wile E. Coyote. The confetti and glitter had burst like a cloud from under the machine and decorated the metal carcass and the snow with ease.  
  
The only thing of the coffee machine that hadn't been infinitely destroyed was the very top that had been held stationary with duct tape. It was held stationary, because Harley had gone through the trouble of pounding a little goodbye note into the metal—possibly with a rock or a hammer—that made Eddie laugh his ass off behind the bomb shelter while Luthor dismissed any possible venture he’d had about assisting in funding the asylum and dragged Mercy off with him to their car; while Wayne quietly chuckled in equal measure to Eddie’s laughter; while Joan tried to stop Doctor Arkham from suspending or just firing Harley only after he’d taken the elevator up to the roof and possibly thrown her off the building much in the way she had done to the coffee machine.  
  
 _{Don’t fuck up, Eddie._  
Don’t be no one’s bitch.  
Don’t let anyone give you shit about your new hat.   
See you around.   
-Harley.}  
  
Weeks later and the former Riddler still couldn't decide whether or not the message was meant to be a warning, a threat, or an actual attempt to wish him luck.  
  
Perhaps this was an achievement in the highest degree for anyone in trying to outsmart Edward, but somehow he really didn't mind that since it was Harley and she had never really lorded anything over him. Ever.  
  
He snapped out of his thoughts when his office phone rang and, seeing as his secretary was out to lunch, he picked it up himself and answered in the usual way he had gotten used to after the first fifty times he’d said the words.  
  
“Hello, Nigma Private Investigations, how may we be of service to you?”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dustin Nguyen inspired this chapter with his Li’l Gotham series with the discovery—again—that any plot is possible.


	3. His Girl Friday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DC posted a challenge about people getting a job if they could draw Harley in a bathtub, naked, committing suicide. Aside from the whole suicide part, I would actually consider the other stuff. So, here we get.

_-:-  
Being an adult? Fuck this shit! Being an adult sucks! Call me egotistic, but I want to __enjoy_ _my life!_  
-hyenafactory.

* * *

 

 

  
_“Stop it.”  
  
Joan continued to brace her chin on the ball of her hand, the busted fan of the doctor’s lounge still spinning at an accelerated speed when it was snowing outside and everyone on staff had their white (or in Harley’s case—high octane black) coats still on and every single button done tight to preserve their body heat; the tips of her hair swaying back and forth and her pearl necklace white teeth showing as she grinned across the table at her friend. Friend in her words, mind; Harley still refused to call her that back.  
  
“I’m not doing anything,” Joan practically sing-songed, emphasizing this statement by not flinching when Harley finished the paperwork she was on _ _**(petitions Ivy had started posting twenty-four hours ago when Joker got shoved back into his cell and all of the papers said that she very much wanted to speak with Harley as soon as possible)** _ _and slammed the folder holding it all with a snap that made Becky Albright over in the corner of the room trying to reach the Twizzlers in the top shelf cupboard, jump.  
  
Dainty, cracked fingernail hands went onto her next load of papers that Becky had handed her twenty minutes previously on her opinions on Jervis now that he was actually talking to her in therapy without Harley coming in to check on him and make him stop quoting the Alice books, “Yes, you are, _ _**Jane** _ _.”  
  
Joan twitched, just barely, at the hated nickname (_ _**well, less hated than being called ‘Dominatrix’ when she was on long distance calls to her parents, but still disliked during work hours when Joan couldn't just walk away until Harley was willing to listen to her** _ _) but the smile didn't drop, “No, I’m not.”_   
  
_One blue eye passed judgment on Joan as the other one was still fitted with gauze since the stitches had torn and the risk of infection rose the less they were protected, but the emotion behind the half-glare came through like light passing and contorting colors beyond cathedral glass and Joan at least had the decency to avert her eyes when her grin wouldn't vacate the immediate vicinity._   
  
_Darker pigmented eyes settled on the clock above the revolving doors that had replaced the old one when it finally croaked._   
  
_A green painted figure of Tinkerbell, from her seat on the curled metal of the big hand in the clock that was basically a very detailed metal crocodile set in a circle, biting its own tail, clicked further towards the smaller hand where it sat on the number three. The small hand glinted in the figure of a golden hook, but was so much less threatening than the J. M. Barrie book ever made it out to be._   
  
_“Hmm, only two hours and seventeen minutes until work day’s done. Would you like to go with me to a movie or—oh, wait, you already have plans, right?”_   
  
_It was petty and it was immature, but when Harley’s pen broke in her grip two seconds later and bled royal blue ink across all of the fingers gripping the crippled shell of the writing instrument, Joan couldn't bring herself to care._   
  
_Becky cared from her corner when Harley opened her mouth, however, and made as hasty an escape as she could with her cane and the hard gotten Twizzlers in hand._

* * *

 

_**(Two days earlier…)** _

  
Stephanie had deep blue eyes that reflected the same colors of new denim pants before a teenage girl went out and got grass stains all over them while fooling around with her boyfriend (or girlfriend) and their equal amounts of saliva. Jason had green eyes that could remind Jack (or Creeper, depending on if the yellow alter was in a more attentive mood) on occasion of how Harley had once described to him a Norse God in another universe she had been to who was quite a delight to talk to and made hell on earth for his brother with a hammer.  
  
Harley seemed to level out the color between them depending on her health, her happiness and how much new medication she was on for the multitudes of bullshit mob goons, street thugs, or super villains put her through every month.  
  
At that moment, Jason sitting on her couch smoking ( _she had snapped and snarled and chomped her teeth like her hyenas that slept at Stephanie’s feet, but eventually gave up on making the emancipated minor put the white stick out when Creeper had hurled himself at her window and opened it from the outside—letting the smoke out_ ) and Stephanie helping Harley re-apply the bandages that clotted the open holes along her face that would be there until Dr. Thompkins removed the stitches and applied better ointment, Harley’s eyes were the clearest blue Creeper had ever seen.  
  
And when he meant clear, he meant the kind of clear that Japanese water merchants looked for out in the rim of the Arctic Circle before finding the bluest iceberg that they could, hauling it back to their tiny island and then drilling cylinders out of the ice to melt and then sell at ungodly prices.  
  
Fine by him. It meant she wasn't on pain meds and she was highly lucid.  
  
And _annoyed_ , but the yellow wacky man couldn't be bothered by the way Stephanie made a real effort not to flinch when he crawled further in through the window, wiggling like a caught worm through the small space, and then dropped to the floor in a heap with Harley’s lips pursed disapprovingly and Bud glaring harder at him than Lou ever did.  
  
Her look was thrown to the wind by Creeper considering she was in the bathtub ( _she had bought it off a retail vendor she used to rent a room from back in the old days,)_ that she kept in her storage unit downstairs until more injuries to herself surmounted and she was forced to place it in the center of her living area and the only thing saving her modesty as she sat inside was the bloody ( _so much blood from so many torn stitches, reopened scabby wounds and knife or gunshot marks; the red turned the white tub pink more often than not_ ) ice she sat in to help her heal. Jack wondered if in recent days she had taken up therapy for Mister Freeze, but Creeper carried on; capering over to sit atop the back of her sofa, grinning down as Stephanie continued applying sticky bandages to the wounds on Harley’s face until only one eye was directed at Creeper.  
  
“What do you want now?” Harley sighed, leaning back into the tub’s solid marble when Stephanie let go of her face and moved onwards to the cuts along her left wrist that were compliments of jumping fences outside of the Gotham docks and oozing droplets onto the ice hanging along the edge of the tub and making pieces stick together.  
  
Stephanie absently noted that she was almost out of gauze for the cuts and leaned over towards where Bud was lying down. Her hand slid under his tail _(it was pleasing to the big lug, seeing as the way the grain of his fur tilted and the way she pushed her skin against it left delightful tremors in its wake)_ and caught the handle of the second first aid kit under the sofa that was really extra heavier than the one she was using because it came fully stocked with sterile needles and the drugs that gave Harley just a tiny little bitty-bit of relief when Jason or Leslie Thompkins or Stephanie or—hell—even a few of Batman’s sidekicks helped out when Harley was having a particularly bad day and happened to drop by before she bled to death. The blonde carefully pulled the metal box out into the open and started unwrapping a new roll of gauze and popped the cap of the peroxide since the one she had been using was down to just two or three more rounds.  
  
All this while Creeper continued to smile and Jason lightly strummed the guitar he had a tendency lately to leave in Harley’s apartment so when inspiration hit him then he could catch Harley and bounce ideas off or her (and echo them around her walls).  
  
“I have a bit of a theoretical question and challenge for you, sweet lady,” Creeper finally stated, changing positions so he perched on the back of the sofa like a very large and garish owl, arms behind his back and everything.  
  
“Oh, God.”  
  
“Ah, ah, before you interrupt me, I promise you it’ll be worth your while.”  
  
“I sincerely doubt that, but whatever.”  
  
Forging onward despite Harley basically ignoring him in favor of playing with some of the bloody ice cubes, Creeper grinned wider and shuffled to the furthest arm of the couch and hung almost all the way over and nearly into the tub. Harley reached out towards the other end of the small space she was in and brushed the ice further towards her chest which stayed covered with her sports bra if only because she didn't really feel comfortable being completely naked in her own home with just-this-side-of-illegal minors always popping in and out of her door ( _this included, but wasn't limited to, Jason, Stephanie their friends that popped over when they weren't fixing electrical outlets under the city or being harassed by homophobic gang members that knew better than to EVER step foot near Harley’s apartment’s alley, Robin-now-Red-Robin, annoying-bratty-new-Robin-that-hadn't-hit-puberty-yet and Klarion the Witchboy that once and a while fell in and out of the place to visit Stephanie_ ) and windows.  
  
“Suppose that I could make you laugh or smile while simultaneously doing you a huge favor. Would that get me a date with you?”  
  
Stephanie put the gauze and medical kit back under the sofa and grabbed Jason’s guitar to make the noise stop so she could hear where this conversation went. Not a thing made her day better recently ( _not since Harley had introduced her to Batman and he had helped Stephanie find good adoptive parents for Steph’s baby girl when the blonde realized that she just wasn't mature enough to take care of a baby and Harley took it upon herself to be a better person than Stephanie’s own mother; Steph’s days were actually pretty good without any help since then_ ) except watching Creeper set up train wrecks in hopes to get Harley’s attention. It was better than the circus.  
  
“You’re acting like this would be something easy to do, what with my winning personality,” Harley replied, eyebrows twitching upwards when Creeper just kept looking like he had a winning lottery ticket.  
  
“Well, would you?”  
  
“Would this end up getting me a one-way ticket back to jail or the loony-bin?”  
  
From the inside of Creeper, Jack stated that her suspicions were a valid point, but Creeper was just fighting not to cry at the smoldering blue eyes trying to burn a hole through his head while maintaining his charm.  
  
“No, no, no, no,” Creeper promised, arms tucking outwards to rest on the tub’s edge, making Harley back up further on her end, using her knees to hide behind, “I just want your assurance that if I make you laugh like these big boys here,” he motioned towards Bud and patted Lou on the head, “or smile like the Cheshire-Puss your friend the tea lover mimics so much, that I get you for one evening on the town that will include food and a really, really good time.”  
  
Some of the ice cubes slid around in the tub like slushy being stirred in a mini-mart and Jason stage whispered, “Say yes!”  
  
Stephanie flicked his ear.  
  
“…Fffffff—fine.”  
  
“Shake on it?”  
  
The Creeper’s gloved hand almost touched Harley’s nose with his giddy, wiggling fingers and when Harley gripped it hard enough to snap bones, he actually went lax, hoping she would pull him in so he could fall into the tub and, by default, onto her. She wasn't haven’t that, though and pushed his arm back into his shoulder socket so he lost balance and fell off the couch. His rear hit the hardwood and he made a girly shriek that was torn betwixt delight and confusion.  
  
While he was behind the couch, the whole of him hidden, he raised his arm like an emperor declaring ownership of a new country and said, “But first you need your bathrobe. The favor is parked at the front of the building. Unless you’d be more comfortable without it…”  
  
“Give me a minute.”

* * *

 

_**(Two hours later…)** _

  
The sounds of bells making a jingle that was forever leading children in the direction of the noise with the promise of sweetness during the summer months were still going on as Detective Bullock and Detective Montoya had only managed to find the switch that turned off the revolving mechanism for the human-sized ice cream cone hooked onto the top of the ice cream truck that had been stolen from a Gotham food chain earlier that morning, but Commissioner Gordon wasn't complaining.  
  
The Creeper had pranced off after switching on the Bat signal, but not before taunting the Joker for about fifteen minutes while he spun in circles until the Dark Knight arrived; the red mouthed madman had been yelling obscenities when Gordon and his detectives had laughed their asses off at the sight of him tied spreadeagled to the spinning cone. Being that he was stripped down to his purple boxers and had been driven to the police house only after Creeper had gotten what he wanted an hour earlier, that was almost understandable.  
  
Jim wasn't going to feel sorry for Joker at the moment, or ever really, but he did feel a little sorry for Batman as he was the one untying Joker from his position in the freezing cold. Or, well, taking a small, handheld blowtorch to the metal bands Creeper had used his strength on to hold the white clown in place while Joker screamed at Batman about sending Creeper to find him and how Batman was getting lazy and a whole lot of other crap that could only make sense to Joker.  
  
“…I gotta say, though, that it’s great to see Harley’s taste in men hasn't changed.”  
  
The Commissioner pretended not to notice when that particular comment from Joker landed him a grazing flesh wound from the small blowtorch. His scream from the heat and charring of his skin was unpleasant, but it was no skin off of Batman’s hide and Jim wasn't going to comment when that direction of conversation was pronounced dead on impact.  



	4. Hedging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parenting skills would be nice here.

_-:-_  
What you resist persists.  
-Carl Jung.

* * *

 

 

In the weakening rays of light that make up the grey New York skies before the ascent of night, Creeper considered, leading Harley from one rooftop to another after sitting and standing through an hour long subway ride with sizzle-boiling hot-dogs in hand to make up for when silence descended between them after barbs were exchanged and she kept wondering aloud where on Earth he was taking her about like the Pied Piper of legend _(not that redhead Rathaway that she was soft on for the sake of a few of the man’s white rats that once chewed off pieces of her hair to use in their nests)_ in her heavy boots, just taking the woman to go dancing.  
  
Jack did not like the idea of her jostling around with him and other grinding bodies under hot neon lights and pounding, poorly circulated heat destroying her when she sweated and tore healing stitches should someone bump into her too hard in an attempt to flirt. Ryder would much prefer to keep her happy with a warm meal and a stiff drink and conversation that would get all of their minds _(hers, Creeper’s and Jack’s—three blind mice, see how they run…)_ off of the stifling hour that stood previously in the Metro Tower when Nightwing had nearly jumped out of his skin when he took a call from Red Robin asking where two city hyenas would run off to in the middle of Gotham and she’d been seated behind him while he was waiting in the coffee line with Cyborg and Supergirl.  
  
 _(—Harley had tapped the Bat brat on the shoulder and taken his communicator, her hand graceful and quick as a bird in spring looking for worms and seeds, lips wired thin but comfortably pleased and tilted when Nightwing swung around to see who had interrupted and flat-out stolen his call as she spoke into the receiver, “You might try Robinson Park, birdies. They’ll probably be scoring tail like any red-blooded male. I’m kinda disappointed that you lost them in under an hour, kid.”  
  
Red Robin had not managed words, and not for like of trying while his brain tried to catch up with hearing her on Nightwing’s line, before she’d turned off the communicator to the sounds of the teens basically trying to say, “What the hell--?” in bursts of foaming gurgles that could only be birthed in embarrassment.  
  
When she’d tossed Nightwing back his personalized walkie-talkie, Supergirl had been eyeing Creeper giving Harley a wider and even more insane grin of affection while Cyborg just chortled at Nightwing being freaked out to see Harley on any sort of “date” what-so-ever.  
  
Until the good doctor supplied that she was there because she lost a bet. Then things cleared up so quickly one would think of electronic billboards replacing a CNN headline of “_ _ **What**_ _ **The**_ _ **Fuck**_ _?!” for “_ _ **Duh**_ _.”)_  
  
Both minds agreed on a place where a cackling hero and his broody date wouldn't really be paid much attention to that had _both_.  
  
“Well, this is certainly different…”  
  
Creeper grinned from his place on the highest and surest bough of the tree he had climbed and Harley had followed him up, his gloved hands twiddling with the tiny little multi-colored bulbs of Christmas lights he was trying to string from his position and swing over to the branch Harley was sitting in while staring curiously and almost disbelievingly through a high-panel glass window where something like a couple hundred shirtless gay men danced to the rhythm of Eric Carmen remixed with Blondie. Shirtless, Jack will repeat again proudly from inside the psyche of their shared body, and mostly sporting at least toned abs.   
  
It must have been better than porn, considering he had placed a cooler stocked full of Appletinis and chocolate pie slices in the branch he had pointed her to; one of the Appletinis in a plastic water bottle already opened and halfway to her mouth when he tossed her the lights and she barely had to glance over to catch them perfectly.  
  
“I know,” Creeper grinned, motioning for her to toss the length to him back, but over a different branch; he was trying for something specific for the few men inside that had seen the two hanging about, after all, “Never have I ever been seen with a girl here. They know I’m bi-curious, but all my drinks come free since I knocked around some douche nozzles who thought it would be easy money to knock over the place about eight months back. It was fun tying them up and leaving them out front before the cops came, too. Their faces weren't worth butter for my toast, but their moneymakers made the sweethearts happy.”  
  
Harley snorted into her drink, surprised at his matter of fact tone of voice that made him seem more sane than he often did, but the feel of liquid working up for the sake of quiet agreement and equal parts humor was not entirely unpleasant.

* * *

When Jason Todd had first started hanging around Harley’s apartment, when she had just gotten her job back at Arkham and had barely anything that wasn't bought from thrift stores at bottom prices, it had been out of a drunken need to get in through a window so he could wallow in his own misery at losing out on another scam or being made a fool of or just being in desperate need of coins for a cigarette. On good weeks, he worked temp jobs that never lasted longer than a month because the managers hated his attitude and how he often leered at the female customers who were especially top-heavy; on bad weeks he stole tires or things from cars and trucks that were only on the outside of them and hawked them through connections that, these days, knew to stay away unless he called on them specifically for something.

  
At the time, he couldn't actually believe that she was The Joker’s ex-wife. She didn't seem to care about his opinion on the matter _(actually, she didn’t care about anyone’s opinion that much anymore_ ) but suffered through him asking her questions upon questions that would prove him right in assuming she was a simple nobody and a liar; almost as if she just enjoyed him talking when he wasn't drunk and hauling himself through her window to get to his apartment by bypassing the front door of the building with the loud buzzer on the most absolute of terms. Listening to her answers was downright amusing—except for when she yelled at him during a sentence to “Stop smoking in here” and then he knew that she was in a bad mood from sometime before coming home that she simply wouldn't talk to him about.  
  
She eventually figured out he was a thief, but didn't say anything outright about it until one of his “golden opportunities” he was in the middle of found her observing him in the act and her panicking.  
  
 _(The Batmobile. God, that was sweeter than anything Jason had ever seen and Batman had just left it in the alley next to Jason’s apartment.  
  
He had taken advantage of the situation almost the second after the green eyed smoker had seen the Batman haul ass around the corner of the building chasing someone that Jason hadn't gotten much of a look at, but hadn't cared one way or another. He had gotten to work on removing the tires from the vehicle, careful to put his leather gloves on so not to leave fingerprints, rolling each one over to lean against his building in a neat little row; the plates on the sides of them each had a hubcap with a Bat-Emblem emblazoned on it in gold that may or may not have been real.  
  
His hands were undoing the bolts on the last tire when a shadow had expanded over his back and he froze up and turned around to find his neighbor giving him the scariest look he’d ever seen in his life. He’d dropped his tire iron that had been in hand, making noises in the back of his throat to explain himself, but hadn't made more than am, “I can explain,” collection of syllables, before she’d hauled him up by his leather jacket and told him to go up to his apartment and leave his tools with her—RIGHT NOW.  
  
Jason thoroughly believed that Harley was who she said she was when Batman had come back to find all the tires back on his car except one, with Harley sitting on it and giving him a bored looked while he asked her what the hell her problem was. She had taken him aback—Batman and Jason—when she told the tall man, point blank, “See, I have a theory that your car represents your little family with the rest of your kids. You’re the car, and the tires are your kids. Nothing goes well when a new one comes on and one comes off.”  
  
After a beat of Batman looking even more annoyed, Harley continued, “Why haven’t you talked to Nightwing since your new brat came to stay with you?”)_  
  
Walking up to Robinson Park, finished for the day with his job at a city auto mechanic—three months he’d been with them and didn't seem to think he was leaving with the pay being so good—Jason lit up another cigarette and contemplated the look Batman had given Harley and the strangled tone of voice he’d had at the time.  
  
 _‘Perhaps the man would react the same way now,’_ was contemplated when Jason spotted two hyenas running up the path towards him, a pair of cats ahead of them and two of Batman’s kids trying to keep up. The little one that Jason had found delight in teasing with social media trivia was yelling obscenities and Jason just inhaled his new cigarette, grinning white teeth when the hyenas actually noticed him and each gave a little animal ‘hello’ at him before disappearing into the wild hedge maze with the two cats Jason vaguely recalled seeing around Selina and the weird Pilgrim looking magic user that stayed at Harley’s to either hit on Stephanie or to hide from his Uncle Jason.  
  



	5. Worm Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the belly of the beast. Hold onto your coat and enjoy the wait in line.

_-:-_  
Aaaand—this is where I’m going to die.  
-Will & Grace.

* * *

This is not a surprise, this is not a letdown, this is not a disappointment.

  
This is the worst idea in the entire history of Creeper having existed on earth since being born into the world from the toxic waste that had created him.  
  
“You don’t have to bring any money with you, but you might want to put on something more durable. Some leather body suit like your kitty-cat friend wears to turn Bat’s on would be nice, but your old suit would be good, too,” had been what he’d required the evening before their so-called “date” and Harley was grinding her teeth the entire morning after she’d been _STUPID_ enough to request the name of a leather goods shop from Selina and just bought a simple black one that was a two-piece with boots attached and looked vaguely like something SWAT teams in the secret service wore before they busted in the doors of an international arms dealer, their own guns blazing. The pants part looked normal enough when she draped her black winter’s coat over it when the Creeper met her at the appointed time the next evening atop her apartment building’s roof and said, “Hello. Beam me up, Scotty,” by way of greeting.  
  
Except, it wasn’t a greeting, it was code. It was code, more specifically, for the little earpiece radio snug in his left ear and before she even opened her mouth to say the basic, “Don’t call me Scotty,” all of her molecules had dispersed, transferred and reformed on the bridge of the Justice League’s _(sweet mother of God, could their lights in the entry way be any brighter? She lived in Gotham for fuck’s sake—sudden, onset light even in its most basic forms was kinda really bad and made her go temporarily blind—she couldn’t imagine Batman had designed it that way)_ Metro-fucking-Tower.  
  
The glare she adjusted on Creeper’s stupid, happy, grinning face spooked the hell out of the poor tech that had done the deed in beaming them up, but that was not even close to being a comfort. She couldn’t blame the guy for flinching enough to take a step back—her baby face with the holes in the side of it did not go well with unmasked, absolute rage—but it did confirm for her that Creeper shouldn’t have continued smiling when she opened her mouth to scream her head off at him.

* * *

“ _Karaoke is absolutely out of the question.”_

_  
From across the room and in the reflective glass of the mirror that Jack had put up about a week after the Creeper had taken up residence in his head and started driving him up the wall without something to direct his attention to, the yellow loony sat atop the desk that Jack was currently working at in his office of the news station; his gloved hands were cradling his chin and he was pouting, but that meant nothing to Ryder as he sorted through deadlines on foreign affairs that he really should have finished two days ago.  
  
_ _**“But she can actually sing, which is more than I can say for us,”** _ _Creeper whined from his glass frame, only visible when Ryder lifted his gaze to look at him, otherwise just doing whatever motions were available to the other personality inside Jack’s head,_ _**“It would be awesome to see her rock out like that freaky chick with the monster costume fetish.”** _ _  
  
Jack’s dark eyed gaze tilted up from the writing about Russian political movements that insisted violence on their gay community just for existing to lift an eyebrow at the mirror while Creeper absently looked out through the window at a pair of pigeons fucking out on the corner of the street’s intersection while a pet cat in the window of the coffee shop adjacent to them (a little blue Persian that the owner kept around to hunt jumbo sized mice and made pretty good work of them) seemed to be contemplating how it could get out and eat the both of them, “Tori Amos?”  
  
_ _**“No, silly; Lady Gaga. Rawr, rawr, rawr-oh-oh. Blonde babies all the way.”** _ _  
  
Jack signed his name on some of the papers that required his signature and contemplated that, yes, while it would be just lovely to listen to that New York borough drawl sing some classic rock and make both him and Creeper get even hotter under the collar than they usually were around her, he was also aware that the harsh lighting in every karaoke bar in the world would cause her to sweat blood from the stitches she sported like her badge of rebirth from hell.  
  
“Still, no karaoke.”  
  
It had been difficult beyond measure to put together the resources to capture Joker in a way that would both put Creeper in a good position to ask for help a couple times from Gotham PD, and to make it possible to get a good laugh out of Harley _ _**(and she needed a good laugh. Pain was becoming more difficult for her to mask in recent months with her iron will and her snark and while Creeper still thought she was the most beautiful thing on two legs with a vagina in the middle, Jack thought she could use a break from being manhandled and looked down on by the world at large)** _ _so, he was not going to ruin this one chance he’d had, like, ever, to take her for a night out with subjecting her to Creeper’s awful singing._

* * *

Taking up courting the woman snarling at him like the lionesses of the great African wildlife reserves—from across the landing area for the transporter, the Gotham hero noted Mister Terrific looking disapprovingly at the both of them as Green Arrow stood beside him with files on a report back from Bialya, just looking astounded that his eyes were telling him one thing at the display and his ears were telling him another—was a little like, to Creeper and not to Jack because he had better ways of putting things that were complicated and unimportant in the long run, but…anyway, trying to get Harley to do anything with him or around him was like taking up taxidermy.

  
Taxidermy in its literal translation, mind. Not the way it had been sorted and turned into something either important or grotesque, depending on what source it was sited out of.  
  
“The rearrangement of skin” being the literal translation of taxidermy.   
  
“Why would you bring me _here_ for dinner?” Harley finally asked after it became very easy to tell that her hissing expletives and the like were doing nothing to either make her feel better or make him give a damn about putting her in a rather uncomfortable position. The heel of her left boot tapped up and down with little clicks that gave the impression of gum being stuck to them and her hands fisted inside the front pockets of her black coat.  
  
Creeper grinned at how her slouching to make it possible to cram her hands into the bottom of the pockets made her look like a grade school student caught in her mother’s finest. The coat was obviously from the men’s department of some thrift shop, because he could still smell the faint odor of mothballs and dust and a kind of cologne that brought to mind the underside of leather when it’s been baking in a black car during a summer heatwave.  
  
Jack agreed with a light tremor in the back of Creeper’s right eye as if he were jump-starting a migraine that didn’t get off its feet before rolling over to die or devolve into a simple twinge.  
  
The red boa around Creeper’s backside swayed when he reached into it and tugged out a little paper plane that looked like it was made of some of that expensive paper that offices in New York used to sign away special offers to diplomats. It was heavier than normal paper and the ink smudge more easily, which is how Harley knew, when he unfolded the paper and straightened it out with Mister Terrific glaring even more at the crazed hero, that they probably would be leaving the damn building as soon as the stupid bastard dropped the paper off and went blah-blah-blah with Terrific for a few moments.  
  
He didn’t even have to explain, so she made to wave him off; one hand raised and fanning the air like he was a bad puppy in from the rain and giving off a bad scent, when he placed a five dollar note in her hand from where it had been tucked up in his skivvies (a will of iron, Harley had, not to drop the money after seeing _that_ ) and he pointed a long finger over to where heroes and a few members of the staff went in and out of every few moments, some of them holding coffee cups or nibbling donuts, “Just grab us each a bit of black speed water and I’ll meet you at one of the tables. Don’t worry, Question’s out chasing Huntress, so the table in the far back should be open.”  
  
Her pointer finger almost drove a hole into the green rag-paper as he bounded off and left her to just look after him a moment before she huffed loud and glanced over at the entry to the apparent cafeteria.  
  
Luckily for her, the only person staring at her was Green Arrow and Creeper seemed to be blocking his eyeline when he handed the paper to Terrific, perhaps making the attempt to give her the opportunity to leave for the food court without the archer going after her—questioning what the hell she was doing in the middle of Metropolis, in the middle of one of the main hubs for the super hero community like one of those aggressive bees that stumble into an enemy hive to destroy it—and she appreciated that, a little bit, as she turned and made for the coffee bar in the back of the cafeteria.  
  
She contemplated the five dollars as she passed the entrance of the food court, shoulder actually coming into contact with that cowboy hero Vigilante as he made for the teleporters with that odd British, chainmail adorned blonde Shining Knight; both of them carrying a drink and Shining Knight biting into a bacon glazed biscuit.  
  
It was a bit of a hard brush and Vigilante almost dropped his drink ( _smelled like simple black Columbian, and didn’t look like it had sugar sludge on the bottom_ ) when he turned to apologize, “Sorry, ma’am.”  
  
“’S fine,” she replied absently, noting the prices of the coffee bar and not even sparing the brunette a glance since there was nothing to glance back at as Shining Knight reminded Vigilante they were in a hurry.  
  
When both of them were out of sight, Harley grinned quietly with just the edge of her lips tilting up, blue eyes scanning signature coffees as well as ice coffees and regular stuff while she stood in the back of the line behind mostly just the tower’s normal human staff in their purple and black oriented uniforms, but also third from behind The Atom and STRIPE.  
  
Oh, how she had forgotten how easy heroes forgot what their opposites looked like out of costume, and the perks that came with it.

* * *

Bud was pissed and Lou was getting a little tired of following him from rooftop to rooftop with the Bat-Man’s cubs following after them and calling to them like they were dogs. Whistling wasn’t going to work on them unless they were Mommy; from anyone else it was just insulting as hell.

  
Bud skidded to a minor halt to look back over his shoulder _(a human could barely notice, wouldn’t notice, but compared to other males of the spotted hyena specie, Bud and Lou were absolutely gigantic, eight inches taller than even the alpha females that roamed around the Gotham Zoo like they owned the place—Lou being just a little thinner and more humanly feminine in features than Bud)_ and see how far the Red Chirper was behind while yelling at the newest cub that had the unfortunate smell of the Bat-Man all over him accompanied by the Pissy Little Bitch not even the Green Lady liked.  
  
“I can’t believe father sent us out to babysit fleabags that belong to his enemy,” the Bat-Cub complained loudly and impolitely as Red Chirper bounded across the tip of a flagpole to launch over to the third building the hyenas had jumped to before of the boys, “I mean, if she’s holding something over his head, at least he could be following her around instead of investigating something as pitiful as fraud on his company. This Creeper and the woman could be conspiring to do something tedious and highly damaging to property rather than “going out” as Father said—“  
  
 _Whistle_.  
  
Lou chuffed and led the way to the next building which stalled Bud rearing around and biting the little brats on pure principal of getting on their nerves. Red Chirper was nice enough to them since he started popping in every week to the den and checking up on Mommy or hanging out like a good conscious for Jason ( _funny, Mommy hadn’t found another more fitting name for him or the perky blonde female yet_ ) but the surprise that had started following him around was less than an optimal thing for the hyenas or for their matriarch. He insulted her left and right, looked up to the Bat-Man without actually looking at his deep, profound flaws, had Blue Bird coming back from that disgusting city that left their fur smelling rank for a week to make sure the Bat-Cub didn’t kill another human or domestic animals at every turn and—this was by far the most important thing between the two spotted animals—was needlessly snide to Kitty while doting on Isis like she was that Egyptian goddess Teekl liked to bring up when she showed up with Klarion to visit and hang around.  
  
Which brought Bud and Lou back to why they were trying to lose the two cubs in the first place. When they found out their Mommy was going out with the Creep, they had called up Teekl through that weird symbol she had carved into the side of the outside of their den’s roof and made arrangements that they were spend a night out at Robinson Park for the evening with Teekl and Isis. A human might confuse this for a date while the spotted African born animals really just thought of it as time well spent since being cooped up in the den all the time wasn’t good for them and Isis didn’t like going to Robinson park alone since the Green Lady had gotten into a fight with Kitty the year before. Teekl just wanted the opportunity to spend some time in the most dangerous city in half of America without Klarion spoiling the fun she might have.  
  
‘ _If he makes that complaint one more time, I swear I’m going leave a hole in his leg_ ,’ Bud grumbled as the two pitched onto a bakery shop roof, winding carefully down another set of fire escape stairs and hauling tail through the annex of an alley, blending in shadows as the Bat-Cub tried to jump straight from the roof and to the escape stairs where some of the metal came loose and his foot crashed through since they were old and rusted out.  
  
 _‘Oh, shut up, Bud; Red Chirper has enough to deal with without us eating the cub,’_ Lou replied, mellow as usual, even out of breath as they crossed over from another alley and into an open sewer grate that the Crocodile had shown Mommy a long time ago that would never get fixed because the city couldn’t afford to do anything helpful near their territory; or they were afraid to, _‘Besides, we’re almost home free. They’ll get tired and head back to the den to wait like good little cubs when they decide walking through the sewers isn’t how they want to spend the night.’_  
  
Bud jumped into the pretty empty sewer tunnel first, paws hitting concrete immediately as the sewers around their Mommy’s territory was dry most of the time, re-routed to another chain in case of emergency, _‘I hope so. Don’t think we can keep the girls waiting too much longer before they run out of rats to tear up.’_

* * *

“You know, I always knew you were crazy. Everyone knows that you’re crazy. But Batman vouched for you, so I assumed you were the good kind. And now you lead me to negate my belief in him as one of the leaders of the League by bringing in the Joker’s—“

  
“Not _his_ anymore,” Creeper interrupted Mister Terrific, handing over his paperwork while maintaining his jovial disposition, for no other reason, perhaps, than because Green Arrow was still staring, dumbstruck, as Harley waited in line behind completely oblivious League members and the tower’s staff, contemplating over coffee and the small baked goods they kept on menu, “She’s a free agent, and I’d like it a lot, Mr. T, if you’d remember that before I get so bored that I cry.”  
  
Terrific snatched the paper from the hunched, invulnerable hero, glaring at him and grinding his teeth like he was trying to keep his head from exploding, “Why did you bring her here?”  
  
“Well, I had a date with her, but you said you wanted my write up about my last mission, so I thought, why not give her some coffee before I try and make her happy for the first time since I humiliated her ex? She doesn’t eat enough and our food is just a little above prison junk—“  
  
“Why would you want to go on a date with her?” Arrow asked suddenly, Harley having ordered a chocolate mint frappe and a small mocha cappuccino and wandered over to a table at the far end of the food court that usually was only taken by the Question and him, which made it taboo most of the time among other people to sit there.  
  
“I haven’t had a date interesting enough to pay for with my own money in a lovely long time, G-Man. Plus, she needs a little cheering up.”  
  
Terrific tucked the report into his breast pocket, walking away like this conversation—this morbid curiosity—wasn’t worth his breath, “If you wanted to cheer her up, you should have mailed her a kitten, not committed a security breech that could put other people in danger.”  
  
“She doesn’t open her mail often enough,” Creeper replied back, smile wavering in annoyance as he started towards the food court, hips swaggering like he was trying to flip Terrific off with his ass, muttered under his breath when he was positive the other and Green Arrow couldn’t hear him, “And it’s not that big of a deal anyway, jackass. She’s really _not_ interested.”  
  



	6. Show Your Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being a parent means putting aside your discomfort for the good of the child. If you can do this without giving birth, then you're halfway there.

_-:-_   
_…You are the smartest man in the world. I'm waiting for you to challenge me and say that's ridiculous._   
_-Elementary._

* * *

_It might be interesting to realize that Batman stood slightly over six feet tall and weighed slightly over two-hundred pounds. Most of that consists of muscle during the day and he adds on almost a hundred extra pounds with his suit and weapons and so on and so forth when he goes out into the night to vanquish evil-doers and the like._

  
_It is even more interesting for Nightwing **(standing in the kitchen of the new hideout for members of Bruce’s collection of young heroes that were tired of being treated like children and who Damian would eventually be a part of once Red Robin could convince him and Bruce to give the team a name)** as the most adorable sight of Batman being yelled at in all his scary glory took place before him._   
  
_After, of course, hearing that Batman said he’d call Nightwing as Bruce to Dick and stop being a douche, when their guest knew he hadn't, effectively making Batman a liar and for once making the short woman in front of him very righteous in her fury._   
  
_All of this could have been avoided if she hadn't needed to bail out Red Robin and Robin earlier, but again, Bruce had neglected to call Dick, so the blonde woman was standby lately in case the little birdies got stuck in a bad-bad-bad situation._

_“—And you can’t call him because you’re too caught up in self-absorbed pity to admit you were wrong? You’re an idiot!”_   
  
_‘Fuck, this is adorable,’ Dick giggled mentally, grinning wide and brilliantly and thanking God that Tim and Damian had been taken to the med-bay after Harley had walked in through a zeta-transport with one bird slung under each arm and told the rest of the team to fuck off while she and Batman “had words.”_   
  
_It was so tempting to get some of the other League members in on the action, but, then, Harley could be just as unamused by that as Bruce so Dick would sit back and just enjoy by himself for the moment._

* * *

Leaving Joker under rather unfortunate circumstances **(Tim didn't remember a lot about the two weeks he was missing other than there being a lot of pain that involved electricity and drugs and Joker beating him over and over again; small fingers had given him a sedative and gotten him out of restraints—he’d fallen to the floor unexpectedly with lots of accusatory yelling in dark voices. Being shaken awake by Commissioner Gordon had been a great thing, but that joy was swiftly stolen when he felt the blood caked all over him and pulled bits of golden hair away like lint)** had left Harley in a bad way and with many injuries that couldn't properly be treated even after months and months of pills and doctors and stitches. Transitioning from old life to new life, to her, was like going from Rocky Road ice cream to Neapolitan—boring, frustrating, interesting, boring, frustrating, interesting…

  
She sighed from one of the little benches in Robinson Park that was solid cement that felt cool to the touch on even the hottest days of summer **(there was permanent paint all along the top in the figure of a checkerboard in black and white to suit the city and play chess on good days with people that probably wouldn't shoot you if they lost, Harley’s fingers atop them like they were piano keys misconstrued or misconfigured by a genius on opiates)** and continued to pick at the results from falling from the pebbled path through the park and into some sticky flower bushes.  
  
Her stitches had come loose again, along her face, neck, hands and the tips of her ears. With winter coming undone all around her and the flora everywhere coming in bloom, her blood made the nectar and seeds stick to her skin entirely too easily, and uncomfortably.  
  
“Get off already,” red lips without a trace of makeup hissed towards her head where messengers of the season perched all over whatever they could cling to that tasted sweet and bitter.  
  
The two deep blue butterflies that were making a meal of the nectar and the blood along her left eyebrow **(blood the result of two stitches popping because a strong branch smacked her as hard as it could—good luck convincing her that Ivy hadn't given every last plant in the park autonomy—and the nectar from some yellow flowers that were something akin to what a fairy might drink water from)** quivered their wings at the sound of her, but continued in their eating. The one seated along the bottom of her right eye didn't even bother to do that, seeming to just enjoy the situation as another ten of its brethren perched on her hair, her shoulders and the tip of her ear.  
  
She huffed and looked around the park, absently lifting a hand and bridging it underneath her shirt she had chosen for the day that looked a little out of sorts for someone her age—thirty-two and wearing an artificially stone rubbed mahogany t-shirt with the words ‘I AM the Swag’ imprinted on the chest; thirty-two and old in her old memories hidden beneath her skin like shadows under flaking paint in an abandoned house—so she could dig around the light pool of her collar bone. Seeds were sticking to her sweat and itching terribly as they were; she didn't want to stand up and risk them rolling over her belly and into her jeans.  
  
Nails chafed her skin and she pulled her hand away with about ten seeds, dropping them into the grass, because Red would have approved once.  
  
Harley blinked at the thought and immediately regretted it when the motion and the noise made a butterfly flutter from her head and onto her uninhabited eyelid, clinging spindly legs onto her eyelashes and brush across the wet of her pupil, dust from wings making her sight blur with salt water to wash it away.  
  
“You little fu—“  
  
“If you just shook them off, you wouldn't have to deal with them, you know.”  
  
The discrete line of aging around Harley’s eyes receded delicately at the sound and then the appearance of the little bird that belonged to a bat and was one of the few of that flock **(or gaggle, or cluster, or brood, what have you that there was to care in a word to fit the lot of them)** she made an effort to be at least courteous around for more than five minutes in a single hour.  
  
This particular one was worthy enough, after all, to have left blood and body and flesh for in the wake of a terrible tragedy on her end **(the date and remembrance for the occasion was marked in liquid color to the lowest point of her pelvis where underwear hid it from everyone—it contorted with her scars but was truly only visible in ultra-violet light, maintained the colors he wore out on patrol and stayed in its shape of six numbers hidden in the plumage of a single bird’s wing spread wide and with no body attached** ) and disappointment for her ex-husband. She could look at him for a while and talk without bitter almonds in her tone.  
  
There was a bag full of bread in his hand and seeing him in the daylight hours away from her apartment was odd, so she said so.  
  
“The hell are you doing kid? Shouldn't you being sleeping like a vampire right now?”  
  
Red Robin shrugged, raising the sack of bread like an actor with a prop, “That’s Batman, and I’m out on rounds to the homeless before the night shift. Anything to get away from Robin.”  
  
“I thought you were responsible for him?” Since his mother is useless **(and hadn't Selina loved going on and on about that? Talia raising a kid she made in a tube—literally, she repeated more than once—and then getting upset and leaving him behind when it became apparent that he wasn't nearly as perfect as she had intended; had Harley maintained a perfectly functioning heart, she’d feel sorry for the baby bird)** and Batman didn't know what the hell he was doing, she added mentally and condescendingly.  
  
“I am,” Red Robin groaned, setting the bag down and loosely brushing the butterflies off Harley without hurting them; he knew she was a softy for helpless little things or she would have treated them like dust and gone to do whatever she was going to **(probably bar hopping to avoid seeing Creeper until she could admit she had a good time with him)** as usual, “But that doesn't mean I like it. The little punk should be with Batman or Nightwing, not me. They know how to deal with him.”  
  
“Ah, to be a kid again.”  
  
“I’m not a kid,” Red Robin grumbled, thumb and forefinger trying to remove a grey and blue speckled butterfly that didn't want to relinquish a piece of Harley’s hair, clinging to it like it would become a spider and hide in the yellow it obviously found to be the greatest thing in the history of the world.  
  
Harley poked the bear and patted the kid—ahem, wait, teenager—on the head, “’Course not, you hit puberty last year.”  
  
Before he could get all flustered and reply to that **(a miracle it would be if his voice didn't fluctuate with his emotion change like it had been doing so much lately, fucking hell) with**  a truly good comeback, the purple tinted butterfly that had been sitting along Harley’s neck took off and perched in the edge of his chin, effectively shutting him up and making Harley shake with trying not to laugh in his face.  



	7. Experimental Art

-:-  
Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.  
-Malcolm X.  
  
Love is a violent recreational sport. Proceed at your own risk.  
-HC Paye.

* * *

_There was a certain advantage to being so very much one of the smallest women in the asylum that did not involve being Baby Doll or being crippled and having no choice in the matter like Becky._

_  
Point in case: when some assholes bent on killing the in-house Rogues for whatever reason broke_ _ into _ _the asylum and started beating on said Rogues after incapacitating the guards, it paid damn well to be small, agile and able to get from Point A to Point Be without being noticed very easily.  
  
A good metaphor to think about was if a feral Rottweiler attacked a small child, had said child on the ground and was just about to go for the face, and without warning had a cat bodily slam into its head, knocking it off the child while simultaneously clawing away fur, blood and skin; driving the bigger animal away.  
  
In this situation _ _**(eight in the evening some day in May with most of the staff other than the guards, Joan Leland, Jeremiah and Harley the only ones left for the night shift to be exact,)** _ _the large dog would be a man dressed up in some mockery of one of Batman's partners; except darker and echoing the name of Talon around to one of the others that had gotten in, about the same height as Bane, and would be the dog in the metaphor, the child would be Jonathan and the cat would be Harley herself.  
  
Except, of course, the initial impact on the Talon would lead to him only being knocked away from Jonathan by a few feet and the blood came not from fingernails, but from the steel-tipped boot on Harley’s right foot impacting on the large man’s head and sending him headfirst and foremost to the cement floor. It didn't kill him _ _**(no, as much as she would like that, Batman would never stop bitching about how disappointing it was and she knew Robin—the little one—would be following him around and she didn't want to give the blood-hungry brat an excuse to act poorly—more than usual—around her)** _ _so much as knocked him out with the promise of a headache of epic proportion when he woke up.  
  
Just to be sure he didn't run away or wake up feeling even a little good at not being dead; she used her foot to spread both his legs and only paused to get the angle correct before stomping down as hard as she could into his crotch.  
  
He didn't wake up, which was a shame since the scream that would have followed that impact _ _**(she was aware she squished his undercarriage damn good and it seemed that his pelvis gave a little way with a crack)** _ _would have been divine, but she didn't dwell. Instead she turned to Jonathan.  
  
Not dead, but unconscious from at least seven punches to the face and ribs, his blood unsettling against his orange jumpsuit and running down his nose into the crease of his mouth; giving off the feeling he had swallowed some of his own blood was not helpful and made her own guts clench in fellow feeling.  
  
Sinking into a low crouch, Harley wrapped both arms underneath the Professor's frame and brought him up against her chest _ _**(him being a good two feet taller than her making the scene downright comical if she actually thought about it)** _ _like he was a princess; getting him somewhere safe was the first agenda, and then she would go onwards into the evening with finding the rest of the creepy bird men trashing the place—with a little luck, she could break a few arms and legs and make herself feel better about not getting to Jonathan before he was knocked around like he'd been so often in his life._   
  
_He'd be embarrassed if he woke up and she was still holding him like some fragile (god forbid) woman, so she quickened her pace to put him back in his cell and locked the door until the problems were over, absently hoping he could sleep properly for a midget of time. He never slept so good as when he was knocked unconscious after all._

* * *

  
The faceless man sitting behind one of the more private tables in the Justice League's Metro Tower, heartless black coffee in the recycled cup he brought from place to place _(his tongue never much cared for the silver metal he had to wash day in and day out, but he didn't care for getting cancer from ingesting chemicals heated and mixed with the coffee in polystyrene)_ between his palms, tried not to twitch noticeably at the lump of misery that had followed him to the table after Batman had finally lost him.  
  
The Question as Vic Sage, a reporter, could admire the Creeper's center personality, Jack Ryder, also a reporter, for being probably the most honest journalist and studio man in Gotham. That would be as difficult a job as Vic had, and they had chatted on occasion when they happened to run into each other doing their own investigations into stories that most of their colleagues in the news rooms wouldn't approve of and were afraid of. As the Question, Vic of course, knew about the personality that walked around in Jack's altered body, so he didn't avoid the Creeper as much as the other League members _(who weren't from Gotham—the Batman and his brood had a habit of keeping an eye and ear directed towards the two lunatics; some more friendly than others)_ did, but it was unnerving when they actually talked to each other.   
  
He still wasn't absolutely sure if The Creeper knew who The Question was and there was nothing more unpleasant than not having an answer he could get at if he were a little braver. But multiple personalities were difficult to understand, he didn't want to risk something going out of his control.  
  
He was saved, thank God, from initiating conversation when one of the few other League members who spent time with both of them wandered over with a full tray of food and curiosity at what was shaping up to be an amusing length of break time from monitor duty.  
  
Green Arrow took a seat next to the faceless man, sticking a french fry into his mouth, chewing and then talking around it in such a way that would make the women of those prep-school etiquette classes grind their teeth in dismay, “Hey, guys, what's happening?”  


* * *

  
 _It was somewhat irritating beyond words_ _**(and she** _ _ **had** _ _**words that she used as a daily reminder to her interns that she was still to be feared; she gave Joan headaches that throbbed with each heartbeat when she wanted to get a point across; some words in her vocabulary were prohibited on asylum grounds by Jeremiah himself after she had hissed and barbed and taunted some of the older guards for failing in their positions and sent them into turning in their notice papers or excusing themselves from work for a whole week)** _ _that after all the chaos set through the halls and grounds had tempered out and silenced to a quiet hum of police cars parked on the gravel outside, that Joker was one of the few inmates left undisturbed by the trespassers. The scarring along the edges of his mouth looked like crinkled paper sprayed with beige/rouge cover-up without his application of smeared lipstick or his own blood from chewing on his own tongue or the base of his bottom lips; altogether a disturbing sight. More so because he'd conned a bathrobe out of Dr. Blaylock for good behavior during the last month_ _**(granted, he only had a small window of opportunity now that Harley had upped her hand in keeping him in the cell; good behavior was par for the course with nothing to do but read the books they gave him—all soft copy—or play with his cards)** _ _and was decked out in its revolting Proletariat Purple and his state administered Marilyn Monroe Gray boxers and that was it.  
  
Lou had gone off with Joan when Gordon had called and asked to be buzzed in so the police could pick up the various unconscious bodies lying about and take them in for questioning at the MCU. Bud was the one standing with Harley as she made sure all the locks were in place, most of the rogues passed out from the skirmishing or just asleep from needles assaulting them on their doctors' _ _**(not Harley; she wasn't responsible for all of them and if she was, she wouldn't give them anything stronger than Aspirin and Ibuprofen if she could possibly help it)** _ _orders. But Joker was awake and humming as she checked on Ivy's lock; his nasal voice breaking through some of the hummed notes to chuckle words that made her want to get up off the floor where she wad adjusting the lock and walk down the hall to ask one of the guards for a tazer she could press it right into his ribs.  
  
Some thoughts wandered into her head as her fingertips traced the numbers on the lock and then spun them back out of order, moving from the ground with Bud there if she tripped again like she had earlier on some broken window glass _ _**(those Talons were probably going to be jacked up in due time by Batman, so she wouldn't plot against them for the moment just because her new black tights had holes in them and the cuts underneath caused blood to ooze along the netting and make it look like she'd had her period without precaution)** _ _and getting up to walk along the walls to check on the rat-bastard's own lock.  
  
Humming, humming, giggles on the higher pitch that Joker's voice could hit and then, “...get your kicks ON sixty-six...”  
  
Since having to take part a lot more in Joker's therapy in the last few weeks _ _**(Arkham himself knew that the Clown Prince couldn't be cured, but surely his condition could be managed, in theory, “Right, Doctor Quinzel?”)** _ _with nothing troubling her much other than feeding him and making sure he wasn't getting out by checking his cell and the guards' activities and his session tapes, the blue eyed blonde was starting to, mysteriously, empathize with Melville's Captain Ahab._  
  
What was it that had been written that she'd actually gone online to look up after feeding Joker shameful white fish that he'd requested, it seemed, just to make her gag at the smell and sight of scales and dead eyes lolling in oil meant to keep them soft and juicy and delectable?  
  
Ah, right,  **'It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me...'**   


* * *

  
  
“Why won't she call me back?”  
  
Question cringed inside his overcoat and he leaned back into the crappy cafeteria chair that all the tables of the room came with at the sound of Creeper's haltingly whiny voice, face tilting as well to get out of physical range as the larger man _(funny, Ryder wasn't nearly as imposing, but, then, he didn't run around in a red boa and a green striped thong that showed off all the possible points he had in evolution meant to make him intimidating)_ crested over the tabletop and seemed to wilt by answering Green Arrow's inquiry as to what was going on. The favored color of Indian weddings tinted man laid his face almost flat onto the cold _(and apparently not cleaned yet; coffee stains ringed around the edges like oil in puddles that sparkled disgusting and interesting after a storm)_ wood and hard plastic; the sound of a winter awakened Grizzly bear vibrating out of him and making Flash and Nightwing, walking in to grab some grub before the speedster passed out, blink over at their table and shuffle around them when they spotted Question wave them away in warning. The good man.  
  
The archer, to be fair, seemed to realize what the whining was about a lot quicker than he usually noticed such things and set the fry he was aiming to eat back down with its fellows. If the conversation was going to head downhill, he'd rather not add something to his guts he'd probably gag on.

 

At least he knew who the 'she' was, even if he wished _(after a reasonably intimidating conversation with Batman after the Dark Knight practically verbally gored Mister Terrific over the little visit Harley had paid the tower to drink coffee and eat lightly before taking the transporter again)_ that he didn't.  
  
 _(“I wouldn't go so far as to say that I trust her, but as long as there's someone with her when she's here, I don't have much to complain about it. The worst she's done in the last two years is cause some of the Arkham staff to have nervous breakdowns and got Robin to take up watching Disney movies as a type of homework.”  
  
Ollie blinked fantastically at the mental image and the words actually falling out of Batman's mouth as he didn't even bother to turn and look at the blonde while he typed up a report Nightwing had handed over to him about Red Robin's success with their covert ops team out in Russia that had something to do with Icicle and Count Vertigo. As great a team leader as Nightwing was, all his reports usually needed to be looked over for his atrocious, illegible handwriting.  
  
“So...” Ollie hesitated, head turning slightly from one direction to another in case he said something out of turn that he would be embarrassed about in front of other League members; the coast clear as far as he was aware, “You're actually okay with this...thing...going on between those two?”  
The clicking of the Dark Knight's fingers paused over the keys [_ _ **the date needed to be changed and some letters in the sentence of 'unexpected complication to freezing climates' required refitting]**_ _but he did not turn and went right back to it as soon as the stall happened, barely acknowledging the inquiry for what it was._  
  
“For now.”)  
  
“Playing hard to get?” Ollie suggested, cautious and hopeful that was what the man was looking for in confirmation.  
  
Question tilted his head towards Green Arrow at such a suggestion, but, frankly, it was more helpful than he could have realized when Creeper lifted his head up and seemed... thoughtful. Or, as thoughtful as he was capable of being.  
  
Or maybe he was hallucinating for all Question knew. Multiple personalities tended to communicate mentally as well as verbally when the psychosis settled into a pattern brought on by extreme stress like a body physically changing when drugs weren't pumped in to keep it stable. Batman had mentioned the Scarecrow doing similar things when he thought he was alone in costume.

* * *

  
  
 _“Know what I think, Harl?”_  
  
“Probably not.”  
  
“I think you'll want some ice for that eye later. We can't, uh, let your good looks go to shit now, can we?”  
  
Bud remained on his feet before Joker's cell, all hair on end with teeth showing as Harley adjusted the locks and added a few of the ones she kept weighed down in her very large pockets just in case something went wrong during checks and it was needed to reinforce the doors or she thought one of the Rogues had figured out the combinations to the locks Jeremiah picked out. The hyena kept both eyes on the clown, but didn't threaten with growls and moans. Flashing his teeth usually did the trick when the man just spoke and remained stomach down on the mattress of his cell looking amused as he often did when Harley came to “visit.”  
  
Harley spun the lock combination, the number on gold plating moving like the wing speed of a hummingbird and showed her teeth in a vicious, attacking smile as she made her way back along the cell-block, hips causing her coal black coat to sway so Bud could smell the blood clinging to the fabric at the bottom that had collected during the fighting. The bruising Joker had mentioned finally starting to surface along her jawline and both eyes from being blitz attacked in the lobby a little earlier.  
  
There was no reply she was going to give him when she already had a splitting headache and cops to talk to before she could go home. She had better things to do than waste more time on him.  
  
When the cell-block entrance closed, hyena paws following after the tromping from Harley's boots, Joker allowed himself to look disappointed when the lights cut off as they did every evening around twelve to ensure that the patients at least made an effort to go to sleep. Some sass after being bored all day—all week, all month—would have been nice. Silence was never any fun.  
  
...Oh, wait.


	8. This is the Good Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, let's be clear: this particular version of Klarion I'm using is mostly based on his comic (all hail Dustin Nguyen for this) form—skin tone, background and fashion choices, but there is a little dusting of his Young Justice form as well—mostly his voice and mannerisms. Teekl, as in most incarnations, is female.

-:-  
There's no safe place in this story.  
-Sweet Hearts, Melanie Rae Thon.

* * *

“...My apartment is not a way-station for the destitute that you find in the subway, Jason!”  
  
“Whoa! Whoa! No—he's not staying, I promise! I just found him getting beaten up for being in drag and he said he's not from around here and all he needed was a phone and an actual address for one of his co-workers to come and pick him up at, I swear!”  
  
“Co-workers? What, he's from Vegas?”  
  
“Uh...no. He says he's on assignment from Metropolis and he got separated from the others he was with when one of their targets thought he was actually a girl...and maybe holding some cocaine in his bra... I guess.”  
  
“Why is he wearing your pants?”  
  
The brunette shrugged with his hands looking similar to Atlas bracing the Earth or sky, comical entirely in his current condition of wearing his favorite leather hide biker jacket, matching lace up boots and lacking the pants he'd given to the guest he'd dragged to Harley's apartment, his black brief underwear hugging him as his only cover to decency, “I had to get those fag-haters to lay off of him somehow. There is no better way to go than to show no fear, right?”  
  
The blonde sometimes regretted that she discussed and revealed pieces of her old life and current life to Jason and Stephanie and all the others than swept in and out of her home almost every day of the week and most nights, but never more-so than when he or she brought up tips she'd given them if they were ever in a bad situation. Say, if Scarecrow got out and started poisoning people—what to do was to will through it and remain calm.  
  
Harley shut her door with a deep sigh full of exasperation, the bolt not even touched so the poor ginger on the sofa wouldn't feel cornered as she removed her coat to hang on the door _(black and heavy, but not soaked in as much blood as when her stitches opened and stretched with her skin moving like dried sand and muddy water)_ and kicked off her work flats, dragging her two grocery bags into the kitchen. Ignoring the situation was preferable to paying attention to the high pitched screaming in the back of her head at recognizing the words 'Metropolis' and 'assignment' in connotation to small redheads that didn't even look old enough to shave.  
  
Her eyes did flicker, briefly, to the freckles on the young man's face and the tiny little silver camera that looked like it could belong to a teenage girl, but with extra buttons and extension to the lenses that made it above and beyond when a not-social-elite teen could afford.  
  
“Fine. Fine. I'll be making dinner and pretending that I'm on Iron Chef until I feel like facing reality.”  
  
“Um,” Jason hummed, as he followed her just to the door frame of the kitchen, Bud and Lou asleep inside the dried goods pantry where summer could not assault them and make them even more crabby than when Jason had come in through the window and nearly broken the curtain rods helping the tranny in, “...I can't find the phone.”  
  
Harley set her bags on the counter and opened the fridge. Reaching all the way back to where Jason never ventured after he and Stephanie had found a dead octopus held open with cocktail toothpicks, her hand made thumps and dings and then pulled back out with the phone.  
  
He caught the device when she tossed it at him and tried not to flinch at the chill against his palm.  
  
The young man on the sofa was absently aware that he recognized the woman in an article at the Daily Planet he'd helped with when Lex Luther had been stupid enough to hire the Joker to kill Superman and was allowing the shock to settle in at the same time he counted all the scars he could make out all over her arms and hands and what little skin he could see between her thigh-high black stockings and faded jean shorts.  
  
...Strange, he didn't remember the article saying anything about her having kids.

* * *

  
_It's really quite amazing what a person will do when they've lost a lot of blood and find themselves in a familiar neighborhood, only they can't remember why it's familiar and then (well, would you look at that) they're unconscious. And then they wake up to find big blue eyes and blonde hair and they're being piggy-backed into a very narrow doorway and the girl doing the carrying hits the injured person with the door frame by accident and they're unconscious again.  
  
(“Oh, this is so not the way I thought I'd end up meeting you the first time. I always thought it would be during a mugging, or you coming to look for your li-li-little—dang, you're heavy... your baby brothers.”)  
  
Heavy grunting from a light voice echoed the stairwell up to the apartment full of bandages and rubbing alcohol and pain killers—and an angry psychologist quietly pretending that the carrots and celery she was hacking at with her twelve inch butcher knife _ _**[taken from the throat of a large black bull she'd chopped up and put in the freezer a few days previous, much to the girl's eccentric boyfriend's delight and the mutual horror of both the Birdies that came knocking for intel on one of Poison Ivy's old bolt-holes]** _ _were fingers and toes and a penis, all white bleach in color to help her get it done faster; an unwilling transvestite sitting on the sofa with an ice pack to his shoulder that had been knocked to brick and wood and offending fists, quietly and politely listening to the only brunette in the room spout about news anchors in general as he looked for a pair of pants he might have left around the apartment the last time he got blitzed and passed out without being invited._   
  
_A few of the wretched of the world blinked owlishly from their own chipped paint, loose nails, nicotine stained doorways, but didn't remark on the sight as the girl made it up another flight with the much taller person. Two of them grinned and muttered about something crude, sucking on their cigarettes and going back to talking about whatever they were beforehand._

* * *

  
“And that's the soonest you can get here?! I was almost defiled—I mean...molested. No, I mean, uh, assaulted.”  
  
“I think defiled sounds better, don't you?”  
  
Past the stage of trying to keep cool in the pantry and opting to watch the adorable ginger embarrass himself via telephone, Lou padded the nails of his left paw against the block of ice in the forever-bound-in-the-living-room tub and keened to Jason in agreement. Neither of them seemed to mind the dirty look the baby-tranny shot them as he continued speaking in an almost harsh tone to whoever was on the other end of the line.  
  
Lou curled around the small baubles of ice he'd pawed loose just as a round of soft knocks and pecks touched and sounded from the door, Jason lifting his head up from his palms to call to whoever was on the other side, voice perfectly toned low and frightening as it always was when someone actually bothered to knock but he hadn't buzzed anyone in—a warning in the event of poor choices from a wannabe burglar or moron drug dealer that had decided to wander around the building after one of the lesser tenants down the stairs had gotten what they wanted, “Who is it?”  
  
Shuffling occurred from the other side, like feet spreading apart and a familiar voice spoke, breathless and quite pitiful, “City morgue, Jason, who do you think?”  
  
“Steph, honey, you should know by now you don't need to knock,” Harley called from the kitchen, unable to get to the door as she was trying to maneuver a large hatchet over a partially cook bovine leg and needed to concentrate if she was going to cut through the knee with one blow.  
  
“My arms are kinda full,” Stephanie Brown called loud as Jason got up finally, Bud grumbling from his place still in the pantry for the young man to move his ass before he made him.  
  
Jason hadn't been able to find his pants and didn't feel like leaving the apartment until Jimmy _(the ginger had said that's what everyone called him and though Jason would never want to follow after anybody else, Jimmy was better than James and he could probably make a passable joke on it if he decided to bring out his guitar; doable lyrics to a just-thought-up song, “Here's to the panty clad Jim-Jimmy-Jimmy-Jim-Jim—with scorching red hair and brown/black body bitch stamped skin,” Oh, the horror)_ got his escorts back to whatever shit-heap hotel they'd rented until his assignment was over, so he really should have been the biggest attention whore on either side of the entrance.  
  
And he wasn't, which was both awesome and disturbing. Harley never completely yelled at him for walking around half naked, but she always seemed to nitpick about heroes passing through.  
  
“Huh, you picked up the prodigal Birdy,” Jason muttered, opening the door as wide as it would go, kicking some of the shoes near the entrance out of the way, so the fairly smaller teen could waddle in with her cargo without injuring him further than he already was, “I wonder how this is going to play out.”  


* * *

  
_**Grey skies; perfection in preferred territoriality.** _ _There was a certain level of awesomeness that Blue Rafters held in just the simplest things that Klarion could live off of forever, much to the utter revulsion of everybody that had or would know him in Limbo Town as well as the unending annoyance of Uncle Jason, but the blue skinned witch boy had tuned out any feelings of theirs almost the minute he discovered movie theaters and 24/7 fast food.  
  
The tuning out had actually diluted into almost deafness when he got himself a girlfriend that could carry him around on her shoulders from one place to another without pausing to take a break and without complaining, like, AT ALL.  
  
_ _**Dark clouds coming in from the west.** _ _However, once you get used to something being a little perfect, you start to crave that little bit of adrenaline. He got territorial and actually started developing_ _**feelings** _ _._   
  
_So when he found familiar, unfriendly faces, wandering around a specific area he almost considered a second home with weapons drawn and Stephanie only just disappearing into the doorway of her apartment building, Teekl's fur stood on end and her eyes glowed darker red. The perfect mood ring if there ever was one. Even though she purred deep when her master's girl and her cargo was out of sight and he appeared like a leaping shadow in front of people who should have run screaming before he even opened his mouth._   
  
_“Hi there, Blockbuster, Brick, what are you doing around here?”_   


* * *

  
“Fuck this horrible shit, I am not sticking around long enough for him to wake up and call his daddy-person!”  
  
The storm that the weatherman on channel three had just that morning said probably wouldn't produce rain so much as thunder and lightning sprang to life with just that as Harley almost tripped over Nightwing's still unconscious body and ping-ponged around her bedroom. Blight colored flashes torched the skies as some of her shoes were thrown back over her shoulder as she looked for her good running boots with the three hidden spikes in each heal, a pair of pants here and there landing on the bed to consider over and the thunder rolled every other time she cursed hitting her head on something further in the closet, fidgeting seeking a shirt that wasn't both needing a trip to the laundromat and were specifically for when she went out to get blitzed and wanted to look like some really upper class hooker ( _God bless Selina for giving her pointers on that_ ).  
  
The two teens that had gotten way too used to such things as what was going on continued on with their business of cleaning Nightwing's open wounds and looking around inside the fridge for something caffeinated that didn't involve fruit. The one that shouldn't have even been in Gotham to begin with tried to not look as freaked out as he actually was and wondered why it seemed like there was cackling on the tail-end of every thunderclap outside.  
  
“Does this sort of thing happen a lot?”  
  
Stephanie looked up from lifting Nightwing's arm over her shoulders so she could look at a twisted area of his elbow that looked like it had been cut deep with maybe something too blunt and had shredded the edges of the wound so the skin bloomed out over the blue spandex/Kevlar, two of her fingers dabbing at the blood with wadded cotton spongy with disinfectant, but not hard and not enough to wake up the brunette, “Not with him. But his brothers literally drop in every other week, so it's kinda expected.”  
  
“He has brothers?” Jimmy questioned, momentarily forgetting the former _(Jason seemed to notice the look of astonishment the ginger had earlier—fear, doubt, suspicion—and had given Jimmy a smile that would have Little Red Riding Hood nostalgic for the furry wolf on four legs; warning against thinking of the obvious out loud)_ lady villain momentarily as she continued rummaging for get-the-hell-out-of-dodge clothes.  
  
“...Maybe,” the blonde hummed, calling out to Harley when she found some spots near the base of the Birdy's shoulder that was a little out of her league to consider over with any fully appreciative medical knowledge; Jason wandering back into the living room as the buzzer for the door rang, his hand on the button and answering nonchalant as ever.  
  
“'S'up?”  


* * *

  
  
Clark really had to start listening to Bruce.  
  
Like, really. That was a must-do on his list of priorities the next time he was in Gotham for anything at all.  
  
This thought occurred to him only as he removed his thumb from the buzzer button that allowed him to speak with the supposed young man that had picked up Jimmy _(he loved Lois, he really did, but sometimes when it came to getting a story, he wondered if she needed to re-assess her life choices when it came to picking out who went in undercover and who didn't—Jimmy shouldn't have been allowed to step foot near Gotham, let alone dress up and partake in the deep end of what was going on with gang bangers that didn't have very choosy tastes when it came to sex with the under-aged)_ and ducked out of the way of the building's stoop. Two large bodies—larger than Clark's by far and with noticeably different skin coloring and texture—slammed with the impact of a wrecking ball into the exterior.  
  
Bits of brick dust and paint chips rained down on the reporter, obscuring his vision until he removed his glasses and cleaned the lines of his eyelids with one finger.  
  
“--Why you being a punk, Witch Boy? All we were doing is putting the Batbrat in his place!”  
  
“And I can appreciate that gentlemen, I really can. 'Cept, see, this negative energy isn't to my preference and it's throwing off the good stuff I've been building up around this center between the four posts I put up.”  
  
“...What?”  
  
Morbid curiosity shifted around the backside of Clark's brain and, despite knowing better, he lifted up from his hiding space _(for the time being, unless Superman had to come out—that bit about a Batbrat couldn't have been good coming from an obvious darkside metahuman)_ to peer out over the stoop at the ongoing performance of three. The curiosity transformed up and left and grew, twisting into worry and just a shy barb between an empty pit that was fear and dread.  
  
Brick was out of preferred place in Star City, grinding his lower jaw up into his teeth, clothing torn and gashed, but no blood marring the cloth. Blockbuster stood beside him, hands bracing the ground _(dead leaves and trash from upturned dumpsters and broken flower pots scattered over from the alleys they'd doubtlessly been in moments before)_ and an equally displeased look upon his face.  
  
To horror, to surprise that Clark did not doubt from countless times in his own life flying about and doing good, Klarion stood barely a foot from the reporter on the base to the the doorway; his physical features not stretched and garish as they often were when he was in full-blown chaotic anger, but still giving off the sound and boiling wrath of an affronted death god. The familiar at his feet bone cracked and fur streaked up to the height of a Doberman, but sat still and glowing red for when her master gave permission to rip throat and eyes if needed.  
  
Canines were sharp and angled tight when Klarion smiled and leaned forward towards the two men, arms crossing smugly and head tilted back over his shoulder, “I staked this place out months ago as a vacation spot. No reservations, no outside entry. Get it?”  
  
Brick looked confused for about as long as his eyes looked back and forth between the shorter male and the building, but it disappeared with a dark frown, looking at Blockbuster who also seemed irritated at the explanation that only gave more questions to the moment.  
  
When they failed to respond quickly enough, Klarion lost interest and sighed, lifted up and hand with quickdrawn scraping of pointer finger across thumb and...  
  
“ _Klarion_!”  
  
The menacing aura, stronger and more stagnant than that of the kind Superman had gotten used to when he was around Dr. Fate or Zatanna, almost seemed to give a squeak and soft whisper before escaping from the blue skinned magic user and leaving him flinching and bringing his hands to his chest like he was about to have a heart attack. Teekl's tail unwound from around her and flattened back across the cement and wood of the stairs, the rest of her shrinking as her red eyes glanced behind the both of them at the voice box Clark had been poking at, the button seeming to click in a out as a voice spoke up again from within the wiring.  
  
The boy cleared his throat and straightened himself into something more dignified and pressed on the button to answer the call of his name, “Uh, yeah?”  
  
 _“Is there a reporter out there a little over six feet tall with dark hair and glasses?”_  
  
Clark didn't mean to, but he lifted his head a little higher and lifted himself from hiding; Klarion looking over at him like the much taller person was little more than an insect that he wasn't allowed to crush without bringing on the wrath of someone much more powerful. Little children developed such feelings early in life and Klarion was really quite old, so he felt such things a lot deeper and longer. Clark just hoped his mood didn't snap like the underground in winter and cause havoc on the surface.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
 _“Well, bring him upstairs and stop fooling around with Daniel and Desmond. The food's going to get cold.”_  
  
“Ooh, you made food?”  
  
 _“I made it out of work before getting sucked into Jackie's bullshit paperwork; whadda you think?”_  
  
Klarion hopped up and down twice, entirely or not at all oblivious to the freaked out looks from the two metas being ignored as the witch boy grabbed Clark by the arm and then waved absently over to the both of them.  
  
“You can go this time,” he grinned, opening the door when the buzzing sounded and it gave a little jolt at the reporter being half tossed inside so it wouldn't close again, like he was little more worth being there as himself than as a simple piece of wood to set beneath the crack of the door; Klarion's eyes showed dark on the two bulky heavy hitters, Teekl letting herself in the door as he continued talking, “But, uh, not too far. I think that big birdy have other brats looking for him by now.”  
  
The motion that had been prevented earlier took place for real as he moved inside the building, shutting the door, but not before clicking his fingers and making the door men disappear. Not forever, mind, but somewhere they didn't want to be.  
  
 _(The ceiling was higher than the both of them remembered, but they remembered the color just right as it was the first thing they both saw when they went from a dirty Gotham street to an awfully sterile environment only destroyed, really, when their bulk smashed down onto a single table in the midst a whole rows. Disgusting slop and gravy, beans and corn, milk and water lapped up with force, like cannon fodder and pissed off men were yelling at them._  
  
 _Guards from the upper levels had dart guns and barely even yelled for Brick and Desmond to cease movement before the two of them were unconscious atop the ruined table that the Capo of Belle Reve sat at; Joar disturbed at their sudden showing up and his son—not sitting at the same table, but just a couple chairs downwards with his current country grown cell-mate—voicing the ridiculousness of how one ended up on top of the other, chicken gravy the color of gray mucus staining Desmond's crotch._  
  
 _All the way at the farthest end of the dining hall, on the other side of the glass where all the women inmates were eating, uproars of cackling erupted, as well as cat-calls and wolf-whistles._  
  
 _Delicious.)_  


* * *

  
  
“Do not say a motherfucking word.”  
  
“Wasn't gonna.”  
  
Harley grumbled and dropped Nightwing's outstretched arm as the knock on the door echoed twice, leaving the rest of the bandaging to Stephanie so she could get the door. The hero grinned shining, perfectly white teeth in approval of the entire situation.


	9. Colors of the Rainbow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In loving memory of Robin Williams, the man who reminded us to regain flight as an adult, to live poetry; who gave a genie his magic, and taught a bat to grow from his misfortune. You will be missed.

_-:-_  
_She picked up and examined a silver charm bracelet from which hung tiny animal charms that chased each other around the perimeter of the bracelet, the fox never catching the rabbit, the bear never gaining on the fox._  
_-Coraline, by Neil Gaiman._

* * *

_**About a half hour before boundaries no longer existed..~**_  
  
When Clark started his sixth year as a hero in Metropolis, there were times when nothing happened, not a thing, no editing for the paper, no bad guys to stop, not even a cat stuck up a tree, and he went looking for some of the people with their printed faces stapled to police bulletin boards. Sometimes there was no luck in the search at all, but one time, very memorable, he found not only a notorious killer, but a small cache of the victims he had slaughtered before killing himself. In the middle of a forest preserve with Spring falling away to give into Summer.  
  
He had followed protocols that Batman had set up for the League if such situations as that ever came up; Clark had called the FBI and they had told him to wait there and not disturb anything while they deployed a rapid response unit to make sure in person that Superman found the right guy _(he tried not to take it personally when the government doubted him, even if the tone was almost crystal clear in their mild disdain and suspicion that it was even Superman and not the psychopath dead on the forest floor)_. In the waiting, he had truly come to appreciate his Kryptonian senses. And abhor his sense of smell.  
  
Walking up to Harley Quinzel's apartment with Klarion walking ahead of him, as Clark Kent of the Daily planet and not the Justice League's biggest heavy hitter, he was also coming to despise his near-photographic memory as well. More-so when Klarion opened the apartment door without knocking and the first thing he noticed in the place was the former villain rather than Jimmy talking with Nightwing and a couple other kids that he'd never seen.  
  
Clark braced himself and almost stopped breathing at the sight of her, revulsion setting into his bones like the fractures and breaks he knew _(Batman had started muttering things over the last twelve months that circled around worrying about his blood son being dropped in his lap, Tim becoming more proficient with the League's covert-ops team, and one of his old enemies becoming a decent human being that really needed to get better health care coverage for the amount of time she spent in the hospital)_ were in hers as she barely looked at him before waving over to Jimmy, “He's probably going to have a few bruises from being boxed around in the alleys, but be happy he didn't get hurt worse. And that he's wearing pants.”  
  
_(In those woods, floating above those bodies he'd found, there were distinct odors coming off of the butchered women and the dead killer; soured and spoiled meat that seemed amplified by the maggots and beetles nesting and eating the poor girls that reminded him of some roadkill he'd helped his father clear from the roads in Kansas. The man smelled of blood from the single gunshot to the head he'd inflicted for suicide, the powder from the gun barely more than a trace compared to the smell that dwarfed even the blood; medication and sterility out of place not only in nature but among the human populace in general—like the cleaning rooms at S.T.A.R. Labs Clark had gone through before Hamilton had turned on him.)_  
  
Both of those smells were falling off of Harley in waves. Clark had to bite his tongue and suck on the drops of blood coming from the punctures just to keep his gag reflex from doing something he'd regret.

* * *

  
“Well, that is, uh, new.”  
  
Normally, Harley was not and never was likely to again, be the type of person to admit defeat and run away, but it was either that or staying in her apartment with unwanted guests and possibly screaming her fucking head off.  
  
Quite frankly, her line for tolerance was crossed when not only Jimmy Olsen, Clark Kent, Jason, Stephanie, Nightwing, Klarion, Teekl and her babies occupied her apartment _(that place that was supposed to be safe and wonderful and quiet after work was over; she had actually sorted out all of her dead neighbor's erotic art and sold it off to get a better stove and kept a few of the better pieces hidden about when she couldn't go out and flirt with any real effort—tacky, but effective)_ but then Red Robin, a teen that was probably from Atlantis _(what, with the green scales and the gills and the huge red eyes that looked like cut pieces of an '80's disco ball)_ and another teen _(blonde girl that could pass for Tinkerbell look-alike in a Disney parade)_ that probably belonged to Wonder Bitch with a lasso tied to her hip showed up looking for the eldest Birdy sitting in her tub like he owned it.  
  
She had limits. Limits she didn't like to _admit_ to, but they existed, which people—normal people—seemed to think was a step in the positive direction; so, yeah. Laundry time.  
  
“This is not the worst thing you've ever found out about me. Garlic Baguette stick?”  
  
Ryder still couldn't get over that she had actually unloaded to him when she came storming into the Laundromat _(big laundry basket clutched in white knuckled hands, her ratty bathrobe perhaps once belonging to Riddler for all that it was a hideous green color doing little to cover-up the obvious look of her storming out of her own apartment in a hurry—complete with flip-flop sandals, her usual lazying-around-the-apartment tank top and hip hugger shorts—at least he hoped they were shorts and not just her underwear because damn if Creeper wasn't looking for a reason to jump her bones at that epiphany; and a large box of instant heated french bread)_ and he'd asked what the problem was, so his answer was just to take the offered morsel and wait. And chew on the deliciousness in his mouth.  
  
The machine full of Jack's socks and underwear klunked and clanked as it entered spin and Harley tore into her own Baguette, teeth going around the crisp outside meticulously. One of the more endearing quirks Creeper had noticed each time he stalked (“Researched,” Creeper defended sweetly, not offended really, trying to be accurate,) her around town on Jack's days off.  
  
“How do you know they're not all still there, just hanging around and still amused at the situation?”  
  
“I don't, but I figure if I stay away long enough they'll just go away. I hope. I'm not sure—I don't care. I'm tired.”

* * *

Clark hadn't heard Tim laugh, really, with joy—in front of him, no matter how Bruce told him otherwise—since he'd been kidnapped for weeks years ago. True, he smiled and chuckled and could josh around with the other in his team as well as Dick could, he supposed.  
  
But he hadn't heard him actually laugh and when he slipped into Harley's apartment _(that's right, he'd forgotten that he hung around the place; he'd complained about it even, since it wasn't really probably very healthy to consort with the woman who had assisted in kidnapping and torturing him)_ Clark had almost floated off of the seat he'd been offered at the sight of Red Robin pausing to take in the situation _(and wasn't it just that? Nightwing on the sofa chewing on a bagel Harley had gotten him to regain some energy after his beating and presumably to shut him up, Jimmy still in drag but wearing the pants of the teen next to him that was perfectly alright with walking around in the rest of his clothing and just his boxers apparently, an actual Lord of Chaos content in the lap of the blonde that had hauled Nightwing up into the place—her head happily perched atop his as he snuggled closer to her and fiddled with her fingers—and compared their different nail polish, her own a white lilac and his coal black with chartreuse freckling them; one hyena soaking in the living room tub and his brother grooming Teekl [he didn't know it, but they actually had a bit of a thing going on—Bud being affectionate to the familiar and Teekl letting him and trying to get over the thought of him being very ugly] and, of course, Clark just sitting there while Harley blundered around, turning off the oven and stove and letting the meat inside cool as she set one cluster of Baguettes on the coffee table and carried one from room to room as she seemed to just chuck random clothing into a basket)_ and his face morph into immature delight and laughter fall from his lips.  
  
When Tim almost laughed himself back out the window ledge and had to be caught by his two teammates waiting behind him _(Lagoon Boy looked as if he thought he was under mind control and seemed ready to punch the younger if he started growling or trying to bite him; Cassie just kept him from bouncing off the fire escape the building's owner finally installed for safety regulations and cautiously looked inside like a kitten too curious to resist temptation)_ was about the moment Harley seemed fed up and just kind of grabbed laundry, detergent and her food and walked out. She'd slammed the door and everything.  
  
Now that Tim had stopped laughing, there was the matter of not letting everyone slip up on secret identities in front of two Gotham civilians and Jimmy. And Klarion.  
  
_'When did Klarion get a girlfriend...'_ was a thought wiggling in the back of Clark's head as he also tried to regain perspective of the situation.  
  
Perspective... in Quinn's apartment.  
  
Not happening.  
  
“Well, Jimmy, I think now would be about the time to get going,” Clark started, getting up slowly, like a deer among hunters with semi-automatic rifles.  
  
“Aww,” Jason, the one in boxers Clark kept noting, bemoaned, “But this was getting to be so much fun.”  
  
Jimmy looked fairly affronted at that, but was stopped from saying anything when Stephanie _(still with Klarion in her lap and chewing his own bread stick—a whole different kind of disturbing seeing him so calm and affectionate and not blowing things to pieces or trying to destroy nations just for the hell of it when Jason Blood or Doctor Fate or whoever was a match for him wasn't around)_ reached over and slapped Jason on the back of the head, making him jolt a little and choke on spit, waving Jimmy to get off the sofa and follow Clark with an air of superiority over Jason—sort of like Diana was with Clark sometimes when he was acting like a blushing school boy, “Don't mind Jason. We know you probably have to get back to your hotel before miss Lane starts freaking out and worrying about you.”  
  
Jimmy seemed to blank out for a few seconds and then lit a fire under it at the realization—they hadn't told Lois really what the hell was going on, they had a deadline, she was going to hang them out of a window or castrate them like calves at a Texas rodeo, “Oh, man. Right. Lois.”  
  
He was out the door like that, absently saying over his shoulder like an after thought, “Uh, I'll send these pants back to you in Metropolis, Mr. Todd.”  
  
“Keep 'em. They look better on you anyway.”  
  
Leering. Leering older teenager looking at Jimmy's ass.  
  
Clark wasn't sure why he actually smiled and tilted his head at that teen and Stephanie on his way out, when he probably should have seen that as bad, but he could think on it after they got back to Lois and after they got back to Metropolis and after he got to Batman and asked him what the hell _(yes, he_ _ **could**_ _swear)_ was going on with his kids and the woman who had stormed out of her own apartment. It didn't seem like this should all be, like, almost normal.  
  
To Clark Kent, not Superman. Superman was thinking of having them all scanned for mind control or drug use. Clark was just delightfully curious to see how this might all turn out.

* * *

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with a commissioned fan art. (http://miss-noidentity.deviantart.com/art/Klarion-Lineart-Commission-511818177)


	10. Coffee or Cotton Grow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the actual meaning of body horror. At least, it is to Poison Ivy.

-:-  
On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kipper it is sealed; who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled.  
-Tu B'Shvat, Melanie Rae Thon.

* * *

  
_The disease of life that was the prize for fleeing madness and, by default, all of her friends, was something difficult to bare, but she was becoming accustomed to it, one visit to the doctor_ _**(her only two that could look at her without recoiling in horror and saying in almost one breath, “Dear God, how is she still alive?” aloud to themselves and to her in a sort of half-there way)** _ _at a time.  
  
Ivy did not know this when she set out in the closing days of true fall, pumpkins cut from their stems and torn apart with knives to make misshapen teeth and eyes and all the while burning on the inside candles that spat wax through open maws, her walking quickly by them on the streets in as best a disguise she could scrounge up on short notice. She looked vaguely like some high powered attorney or their secretary, which was fine when lying to normal people, but for the person she was going to see, it would take more than that.  
  
She wasn't going to hurt Harley; all of the redhead's anger at the girl-woman had been wiped clean over the last few months to be replaced with righteous indignation at being kept in the dark about things so important and worry at hearing around that affection was being freely given to the blonde by someone possibly just as dangerous as the leering bastard forever in solitary. She was going to look at where she was living, scout out the people who were calling themselves her friends _ _**(new and old—Eddie kind of counted since Leland let slip that Harley tended to take the man lunch when she felt like making sure he wasn't working himself to death just to keep his laughable little agency afloat; wheat bread with the crust cut off all of his sandwiches and all the meat she could stuff down his throat to up his protein levels, or whatever)** _ _and then maybe follow her around for a little before deciding what to do next._   
  
_But that plan got chucked out the window when she dropped in to the office of the mob doctor she used to take Harley to when they were raising hell together and she saw wispy blonde hair through an open window._   


* * *

  
“Hands up above your head... that's right, clutch the bar tight as you can... Do you want the—okay, no rope, don't glare like that, you'll tear the stitches in your face...”  
  
As long as Mob Doctor kept talking, Harley would always glare. He thought chatting her up when she had no choice but to come to him for treatment would make her less likely to punch him in the face afterward and walk out without paying, but he was only half right. She hadn't skipped out without handing over his cash in over two years, but whether or not she smacked him was up to how well he could stitch her without having to cut and cauterize old wounds while she held still in a most uncomfortable position on his stainless steel operating table, one of those poles meant for carrying saline bolted to the end of the table so she could position herself on her knees, balls of her feet pressed down to keep her steady. Naked entirely, she looked like one of those fucked up Greek statues, but only if it had a baseball bat taken to it so it was cracked and missing some of the smoothness and even parts that could be properly identified.  
  
“I got hit by a truck and you're worried about my face?”  
  
“No, but your boss will be if she sees blood oozing down your face when you go back to work, and I'm pretty sure you don't want that.”  
  
A sigh, “Fine. Just get on with the—wow, that is a big knife.”  
  
“Yep, special ordered so I don't break all of my other scalpels working on you.”  
  
“Me? Me, specifically? I am not so bad to warrant you buying a fucking whaling knife, you jerk.”  
  
“Your skin is black where that truck's grill hit you at seventy miles an hour through a construction site. We both know that's like cutting Italian leather—plus all the wire your Real Doctor uses for stitches. And the dirt and grit you rolled in that's scabbed over. I need all the help I can get, thank you. Exhale.”  
  
The tip of the knife that spanned roughly the length of six foot tall man's arm and was the width of a fat wrist, started digging into the skin just at the tip of Harley's right hip, pierced the skin so an inch of it spread up for the doctor to grab with two thick fingers, and then began to carve further up to where a little green line from a marker so it would stop. It would stop just between both of her shoulder blades, doing away with the black of oil, hazy red brick dust and brown scabbing from days ago that altogether looked like a pheasant's tail in flight before it gets shot by some dickhead hunter that doesn't even eat the meat.  
  
Chef's did similar things to skin an eel before serving it. Though, that involved a tool that looked a little like a potato peeler in industrial size so the cook could make an incision around the eel's head, insert both hands and then pull the skin off on either side in equal lengths.  
  
That would have been cleaner. Fish secrete fluid when cut up, but Harley bled blood that was hardly as red as it was when she was a healthy person. It looked darker from where Ivy was standing, peeking in and listening. Like strong wine that wasn't quite professionally made and retained some of the skin and coloring from the grapes the wine had been made from.  
  
Ivy dazedly walked away when the doctor found the first hidden cache of stitch wire and might a triumphant nose in tune with some blood spurting free and splashing on the table.  


* * *

 _“So, you finally decided to see Pamela again?”  
  
Harley blinked up from where her head was settled atop her arms in her office, her legs dangling off the back of her chair and her appearance enough to send anyone in Arkham that wasn't supposed to be there screaming and running for the exit. She had gotten in late and apparently fell asleep the night before in a dumpster behind a Mediterranean restaurant and was presently taking a break from pulling bits and pieces of some kind of freakish food out of her hair. Joan resisted looking inside the garbage pail beside the desk.  
  
There was a heartbeat in Harley's hand that was clutched beneath her fingers.  
  
“Within reasonable belief that she won't throw me against a wall again,” Harley answered smoothly, not even bothering to change position after she had just gotten comfy, “Plus, she wrote, like fifty letters to Jeremiah asking to see me. That's a lot of paper. I can't not think about her maybe having something important to talk about that she won't discuss with the other half-wits here.”  
  
“I thought we had a conversation about you insulting Bartholomew and Steven when it comes to their work.”  
  
“We agreed that I'd stop insulting them if they ever got better at their work. So far they haven't, so, _ _**nyah** _ _~” she concluded, sticking the very tip of her tongue out childishly. The bumps raised from when she swallowed scalding coffee earlier were irritated with the motion, but they were appeased when she slid the appendage back into her mouth._

* * *

The Robin—the small one, smaller than the others had been, except for the first, but that was a matter of being skinny rather than just short for however old he was at the time—found her eating a bacon cheeseburger an hour after she'd emptied her stomach from revulsion, but he didn't attack her right away. He actually seemed to be thinking the exact same thing she was, in that if she had just broken out of Arkham and injured fourteen guards, she should have been laying low and plotting somewhere particularly foreboding.  
  
Harley must have been rubbing off on him, because he jumped up, perched on the back of the bench she was sitting on—they weren't in the park, not really, not the kind with trees, but where cement replaced healthy soil and metal was arranged for the little brats on their skateboards that Ivy occasionally watched just to remind herself why she was choosing not to abduct someone else that wouldn't be missed and use him to get her pregnant—and just continued to look at her. She, meanwhile, continued eating processed meat and cheese and a bun that didn't have sesame seeds all over it.  
  
Robin gave her a dirty look when she got a little burger sauce all over her chin and didn't immediately wipe it away, but just scoffed and pulled a travel thermos of what smelled like rich Caramel coffee out of the confines of his cape, undoing the cap and swallowing deep.  
  
“Should you really be drinking coffee at your age?”  
  
The dirty look on Robin's face increased by a degree and even if he would end up kicking her ass for it later, it was worth it to see the split second of borderline indignity.  



	11. Winter Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death from above seems to be the thing to say here.

_-:-_  
My universe will never be the same.  
-Glad You Came.

* * *

Bane had screwed up a week earlier, going after Red Robin and his little team of covert-ops sidekicks on some island off the coast of New Zealand. This was not out of the ordinary and would have been wholly and completely unnoticed by Steph and Jason, had Harley not sent Bud and Lou to babysit the team from a distance when she'd heard from Creeper _(loudmouth, horrendously obnoxious stalker-beau that he was, he had a habit of leaving useful information at her feet before she'd get tired of listening and chase him off like an angry rabbit after a hare)_ about the goings on and the two hyenas had come back... changed.  
  
Not in a bad way, Steph thought to herself, walking from Harley's apartment _(the door was off its hinges and propped up against the outside wall as of fifteen minutes before--after Harley stormed off with her hammer, and her overcoat with Kevlar lining—and Jason moved the wooden frame out of the way so they wouldn't trip over it)_ and over to her own apartment to look in her fridge for the milk she'd just bought, as well as smaller bowls to sit next to Bud and Lou's brand new flower pots they used to eat from since they couldn't use their giant teacups anymore.  
  
Bane had not only been packing Venom, but he'd been prepared for Red Robin with darts full of Cobra Venom he'd gotten from who knew where _(probably one of Kobra's lower lackeys that thought he'd made a small profit on the side)_. All things considered, from what Red Robin told Harley—the woman grinding her teeth, arms crossed and foot tapping up and down the entire time, causing the Birdy to keep his head bowed and respectful, much to Lagoon Boy and Wonder Girl's pity from their spots on the fire escape as they waited for him so they could get back to base—things would have been much worse, and he had been grateful when Bud and Lou had intervened on his behalf when Bane had him cornered and a dart gun aimed at major arteries, as well as thug to Red Robin's back with the same.  
  
His gratitude couldn't do much for the hyenas new super sized forms, but it helped Harley guilt him and Batman into signing a character commendation to the her building owner so she could buy the empty apartment next to her own and tear down the wall like she'd been meaning to for months. She didn't feel at all bad about that and things around the building had settled down, even with both hyenas being about the size of, well, elk. Elk that a grown man could ride. That helped tear down the wall in a day and got comfortable using the larger apartment's main room window like a pet door to get in and outside so they didn't crack their shoulders on the door frame.  
  
But that was a week earlier, as mentioned, and now something new had popped up to make Harley's life more frustrating as well as Jason and Stephanie's lives a whole lot more interesting.  


* * *

  
The Gotham Zoo, while taken care of, big and clean thanks to funding from Wayne Enterprises, had problems with the animals they housed. All the time.  
  
Birds consistently went missing thanks to Penguin, coming back bigger and more picky _if_ they came back at all. Catwoman had the large felines eating out of the palm of her hand when she used the grounds to ditch Batman. The two Polar Bears technically belonged to Mister Freeze and had to be checked in on by his former wife or, much to the head Zoologist's eternal dismay, Doctor Quinzel when they acted up or got sick because they were aggressive but clever and knew when the zoo keepers were up to something. And the bat habitat, while consistently one of the most popular exhibits to the public, came with its own mass of problems that went into the double digits.  
  
And now, one massively distinct thing had gotten worse and the keepers of the hyenas _(spotted, brown, striped, Aardwolves—the whole damn set of freakish animals, thanks to anonymous donations every year that amounted in the hundreds of thousands)_ had been astounded to see the head of the department call Arkham Asylum, yell for about ten minutes strait and then march out with a large box in his hands.  
  
They didn't linger on it, however. They had to get the striped hyenas back in their habitat, stop them from trying to eat the penned up gazelle or wildebeests and then proceed to fix the electric fencing around the hyena habitat that had been messed with. They would prefer to ignore the smells of slightly burnt hair and skin that lingered where the head of the department had been standing while he'd screamed over the line to Arkham.

* * *

“Is she having a stroke...?”  
  
“I don't know, but maybe we should back up a little,” uttered Kate Kane down to Becky and Hiro, all of their chairs making slight scuffing noises as they inched away from the lounge table. Hiro seemed hesitant, looking at the box on the table, over at the door where the Zoo keeper had gone Swan In, Swan Out _(total diva move that probably wouldn't have worked any other day, what with the guards actually doing their jobs, but it wasn't every morning when they had to deal with someone delivering something to Harley, the man actually looked a little like the woman had the month before when she got electrocuted by Livewire when she'd popped into town and didn't appreciate the blonde asking her to please leave her alone)_ and then blinked at Doctors Quinzel and Leland.  
  
 _(“I ran tests, I did the math, I reviewed all of the old footage from the security cameras the last time you gave that Polar Bear--”  
  
“Notchka,” the blonde interrupted, respectful towards Victor Fries and thus respectful of the two female bears he'd raised from cubs. She expected no less from him when he addressed her and her babies and she wouldn't take disrespect from some nosy little nobody that came barging in raging like one of the wretched schizophrenics she had to tolerate just to keep her position in Arkham.  
  
“Her shots,” the zoo keeper continued, sneering as he thrust his box on the table and nearly knocked over the blue cup—a black cloud sticker with a lightning bolt propelling out of it was etched on the front like a warning—filled with Harley's mocha cappuccino, “And I have come to the conclusion that this is ALL YOUR FAULT!”  
  
Joan sipped from her green tea and tried to show that she was interested in this conversation, but Harley's habits were rubbing off on the dark skinned woman in that she could barely bring herself to think beyond the hope that this yelling wouldn't carry beyond their lunch period. She had to get to her two piles of paperwork before their due date and then go through a session with Ivy that would probably go nowhere, “Sir, please calm down. If you wanted to register a grievance with Dr. Quinzel, you need only to have spoken with Dr. Arkham and we could get your problem sorted out.”  
  
“What's my fault, exactly?” Harley questioned, amused at Joan trying to stop the possible fight before it could really find its feet, but unperturbed in her own agenda of enjoying a possible fight. Verbal spats weren't worth very much to her when faced with someone that wasn't, say, Eddie or Professor Crane, but it gave her the old happiness she used to feel before she felt so very tired, so very easily and it might keep her from attending to her paperwork a little while longer.  
  
The uninvited guest didn't say a word. He simply leaned over the table and flipped the flaps of the box up and open, stepping back and letting what was inside leave an impression on those gathered around.  
  
All three of the interns were vaguely aware of the sounds of the TV from the recreation room at the end of the hall turning up in volume, the news showcasing another report that Joker was out and about and to not try and engage him, but to the call the police if he was spotted. Joan was aware of her tea working down her throat in a deep swallow that left her tongue gently scalded and her throat sore from the force. Harley was acutely aware of the rat bite on her ankle she'd woken up to three nights ago in a dumpster that was still itching and burning from her body fighting the infection, the smell of wetness that made the rim of the box exude the stench of something a little like pancake syrup, her whole frame bracing itself tight and tall against the sudden urge to hit something.  
  
“As this is __**your**_ _fault,” the man continued, turning about-face and not looking back, “It is also_ _ **your**_ _problem. I won't have the zoo suffer because of your lot.”)_  
  
Harley blinked and blinked and seemed to be chewing on her tongue, choking a little on lack of anything she could say as what was inside the box clambered about and looked up at her adoringly.  


* * *

Klarion stroked Teekl softly along her head to her tail and back again, the both of them settled beside Jason on Harley's sofa dully observing the activity of the place as Lou seemed far more pleased with the newly arisen situation than his brother who looked—to Klarion and absolutely to Teekl as she grinned and lifted her chin mockingly when Bud looked up at her for a moment and flinched—blindly at the floor and the ceiling and groaned every few minutes despairingly. The bigger hyena's figure was like a statue, obviously still in shock.  
  
The guitar in Jason's hands thrummed under his fingers as he made up a little lullaby with the lowest sounding chord, earning him the attention of one of the pudgy, fluffy white bundles of curiosity that sat contentedly in the center of the room as Lou set to making what the two boys supposed would be a nest by the time he was finished nudging and placing old blankets, scarves, shirts, socks and the like in the far corner of the living area under the bench stairs Harley asked Harper Row to build into the wall under one of the windows so when the capes or the hyenas went in or out, the prints of dirt and such would be less ugly.  
  
“I wonder why she decided on James and Johnny,” Jason spoke suddenly, cutting off the sounds of his guitar completely as the smaller of the two baby hyenas _(how funny that all of them assumed that neither Bud or Lou had been neutered with how violent they tended to get on Harley's behalf, only to find Harley had paid big money for them to get vasectomies; Lou going through it perfectly and Bud—oh, to be half lucky and half horribly unfortunate to be left alone with Joker for periods of time—being made to look like he'd gone through it when Joker had spent that particular cut of money for explosives and gasoline)_ started trying to mimic his uncle in what he assumed was a game of picking up soft things and stuffing them in a corner, and the bigger one looked bored enough to wander over to the sofa and jump up into Jason's lap, “I mean, is it a reference to Johnny Cash and James Brown, or is it something new?”  
  
“Perhaps it is neither and she's just unimaginative in a fit of boiling rage,” Klarion suggested more to himself than to Jason, considering, as he was, over the pros and cons of staying the night with Stephanie or going back to Limbo Town. On the one hand, when Harley got back from chasing down Joker to beat him near death and deliver him to the GCPD in a crude form of bondage, there was the chance that Stephanie wouldn't want to cuddle at all, instead trying to defuse the woman's anger with bandages and small talk. On the other hand... his sister was acting like her usual, as Stephanie and Harley and even Uncle Jason had referenced, bitch-on-a-broomstick self and the blue magician really didn't want to move from one bad situation to a worse one.  
  
He continued to ponder, Jason ignoring him to spout nonsense on the tail end of poorly tugged musical chords, “There's a price to pay, for the price of fame... _da-da da-da da-da_!”  
  
Klarion set his head to rest on the palm of his hand and blinked at the hyena cubs again.  
  
It wasn't a wonder why the two cubs had been given to Harley, obviously being mixed breeds of spotted hyena and striped hyena _(both were a chalk color that could have been an environmental result of being born in winter, or it could be their life coats for all anyone among the humans knew)_ and therefore useless to further the numbers in captivity, but everything after that was a wonder. Certainly it was.  
  
James, in Jason's lap and the bigger twin, moved over slightly and sniffed at Teekl, earning him the cat turning her full attention to him and off of Klarion's lap. As Bud and she had a propensity to pleasing each other whenever Klarion and Stephanie pleased each other, her affection allowed her to be gentle towards his progeny; she butted noses with him and then set to cleaning dirt from his fur along the granite colored stripes that lined his eyes and the darker tinted spots that were just started to blossom as he was growing along the rest of him.  
  
The connection between Teekl and Klarion flickered just a moment his feelings of discomfort at her being maternal to her “fuck-buddy's” cub; she glanced at him as Jason continued, but didn't send anything back over the connection that she hadn't a billion times before in their lives. Mainly for him to contemplate the feelings of others and him ignoring her with a huff, as usual.  
  
Lou was just about finished making up the nest it seemed, turning back to find Johnny almost knocking into the pad of Lou's back paw, a sock in his mouth and a keen leaving him when he rocked back onto his rear.  
  
Both Klarion and Jason flinched at the amused squeal that both the adult and the baby hyena echoed when Lou laid down and started cleaning the baby's chest and shoulders; adoration in its fullest form.  
  
Bud just tried to pretend that this whole thing wasn't happening. That he hadn't accidentally deceived Harley when he'd woken up years ago and been bruised from Joker kicking him in the gut while Lou had woken groggy from anesthesia leaving his system and they'd both been miserable thinking they wouldn't have children, but that life would move on. That he hadn't used Harley treating Shaka and Notchka at the zoo _(because the keepers were just so useless)_ as an excuse to sneak off and visit the striped hyenas and help out one of the younger females in heat _(not the spotted hyenas, no—he and his brother decided that those females were bitches that didn't deserve them)_. That he would fall asleep and find that this was all a practical joke that he had grown used to not happening since Joker was no longer necessary to their lives.  
  
Failing all that, he would pretend that Harley would not come through on her threat that he was going in for a vasectomy himself as soon as she found the doctor that was supposed to do it the first time and gave him a good throttle.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the hyena cubs are not OCs. They exist, you just have to go looking for them.


	12. Weltschmerz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People do stupid things in relationships. Knowing the difference between the insignificant and the ones that matter, now, there's the trick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be so much more bad-ass. But, well, I can't write fight scenes too well. Apologies.

 

 _-:-_  
_Staring down_  
_an endless sky_  
_unable to face_  
_injustice_  
_or even I_  
_A tiger's loveless soldier._  
_-Awaken, Love, Jewel._

* * *

 _  
  
(Present...Undetermined)_  
  
Penance means nothing if it's easy...  
  
The one piece of wisdom Harley's mother ever gave her when she was, what, six? Seven? Before her father and brother ended up dead or in jail and fell in love with the drink.  
  
Penance wasn't supposed to be easy; she got that.  
  
Luckily, the owner of the bar that specifically catered for the gay community wasn't going to bash the understanding in that wisdom over Harley's head at the moment. The young woman on the other side of the counter knew full well who Harley used to be, and that she'd held the bar and its people up at gun point some years ago and that she'd stolen over twelve-thousand dollars in cash from the safe under the flooring, but... the blonde had slowly been paying the owner back after every personal trip to Atlantic City _(money was actually so easy to earn just counting cards and playing the ponies, but Joker was an impatient bastard and didn't have the ability to just wait a few days before doing something stupid)_ and she looked _way_ too fucked up to talk to about paying for her drinks before ordering, so Harley was confident she would be left alone for the duration of her stay.  
  
That and it was Gotham, so the blood oozing from her face, arms, neck, shoulders, tears in her jeans, what was left of her shirt—fuck it, ALL of her, was a pretty good incentive to stay away from the bar stools on either side of her person.  
  
She debated whether it was worth working through the blood in her throat to ask for a straw. It would hurt, but her hands were having a hard time picking up the vodka on the rocks with all her shaking and broken fingers...

* * *

 _(Past...One Quarter of a Day Previous)_  
**  
** It wasn't the best idea in the world to take on two at once, but the anger was so bone deep after looking for a way out of her that she hadn't been thinking rationally when she'd turn over a drug dealing snitch and been told that the two of them were with a small cell of other villains plotting something she considered stupid. Something to do with the League of Assassins, no bother to her since she wouldn't interfere with their plans, just take up a moment of time with an old acquaintance who had overstepped without thinking.  
  
And chat with her ex, of course, of course.  
  
“You shouldn't have done that, payaso,” the slightly shrunken heavy fighter hissed from his place under a statue Harley had knocked onto him after ripping into the area his Venom passed through its tubing and into his veins. Her nails had run deep along the slightly scarred hole that had long been the injection point that made him strong; all of her nails still had traces of his blood and skin under them, as well as dirt from clutching at the ground when he'd tossed her about like some crafted third-world ball on a rope.  
  
Lucky for her, the statue she'd gone at with her hammer would keep him stationary until after she got her hands on Joker and left.  
  
“Sorry, chico,” chapped lips half-smiled, almost apologetic as she got up from her less than dignified position against one of the courtyard walls _(nice place the Demon's Head had picked out for a hiding place, but far too close to Alabama to be truly off anyone's radar—forget local law enforcement, Batsy probably had the placed staked out from half a mile away across the swamp lands)_ to try and limp up into the house-mansion-over-sized-building that was slightly less full after she'd sent over two-hundred dollars worth of fireworks through four windows with a rocket launcher, “But you really had this coming. I would've thought someone as smart as you wouldn't'ta made a move against someone obviously under my protection. My babies' enhancements might come in handy in the long run, but you had the poor timing to fuck up in the same week stretch as Jackie.”

* * *

 _(Present... Undetermined)_  
  
Her tongue flattened to the bottom of her mouth and her teeth shifted in tiny increments _(Joker did a hell of a job actually going for her face this time when generally that was the last thing he went for—never let it be said that he couldn't appreciate the few assets she had left still clinging to her body after the last decade when most of them had been incinerated over the years or torn off, cut off, poisoned, excised, lost along the way or just barely existed in the first place—both her eyes would like like black holes the next day and he'd cracked her top left molars)_ as Harley made to ask for that straw when one appeared quietly in the gloved hand of someone sitting next to her and took its rest in her drink after winding in a semi circle.  
  
Had she the energy and her lips weren't stuck together with steadily drying, tacky blood, she would have told her companion to get lost—and maybe a small thank you—but circumstances being what they were, she gave up on her weariness and just bent slowly down to take a sip.  
  
“...I'm kinda wondering how you got back from swamp country so quickly in your current state.”  
  
Hm.  
  
“Not that I expect you to answer or anything, a girl's gotta have her secrets—am I right?”  
  
The bartender continued to wash out a pint glass, but she gave the moderately attractive man in the dark coat with his sopping wet hair _(rain still patted and made a din on the rooftops with the metal patches still attached to keep the wet outside of the buildings; a small storm finally let loose after building for seven hours in clouds of smog)_ a nod, very used to Gotham night life and quietly contemplating the pros and cons of calling an ambulance. Harley seemed to be very alert and conscious but there was blood seeping from her rather obvious and more than apparently agonizing injuries and onto everything. So hard to decide between being one of the bar's basely decent human beings and possibly getting a visit when the blonde got out of the hospital—the next day—like she always did.  
  
The washcloth inside a pint glass spun in counter-clockwise motions, dark amber bean eyes glancing between the two people who were once (might still yet have been with the way Gotham and Arkham operated, but whatever) perpetrators of highly dangerous lifestyles and many-many-many-many countless felonies...  
  
Let the man take her home before she had to call a doctor—an ambulance was expensive and no matter that she was only trying to help, the injured party had yelled at her for it the last time. Let that happen, that would be good if there was someone looking after the woman that wasn't just trying to fill her other customers with mind numbing intoxicants (perfectly legal ones).

* * *

 _(Present... Elsewhere)_  
  
Pacified contentment buzzed beneath their fur as the two infant hyenas sat before the door in the building they had been brought to when first introduced to their new owner and paternal figures. The woman rarely let them roam further than the territory she and the elder hyenas had staked out, and always with someone else with them, so being brought to somewhere new was a real treat. They would have liked to move further along the halls, sniff at the hard earth walls, the floors with the many human footprints laid in lining of dirt and debris from different places, take a look at the other humans in the rooms...  
  
But when James or Johnny made the move to take little steps forward and do just that, the elders made a low noise _(their blood parent with raised fur and tail flicking hard against the floor like deeper anger trying to work out of him)_ or pulled them back to either side of them. Dark sun colors highlighting the snowy down fur in the low light made them look both adorable and almost despicable considering their location.  
  
The little ones didn't know exactly why they were left alone with the elders—not by their woman, she was elsewhere and had Bud and Lou both terribly on edge when they had woken up after she had left that morning and hadn't been back yet, Jason having to feed them some of the cow meat from the fridge and curious at no evidence of Harley having gone to work with her shift clothes still laid out on her bed, untouched—but both didn't much care for being left at the door for much longer.  
  
Clicking shoes sounded off down the hallway, coming closer.  
  
Bud lifted his head from off his paws, almost coming to settle at the same height as the window in the door behind them that was above the waist for humans, tail stilling.  
  
The fur on end settled back against him when he saw it was just Dr. Leland, two of the Ducklings behind her directly and the other one probably missing for the sake of finding hot coffee from the waiting room two floors down outside of the security ward.  
  
Nervousness ran off of the three humans like salt off the coast; the black woman's finely manicured nails tapping in rapid succession against her right side in a manner that must have caused pain to the skin underneath her clothing. Better than the emotional turmoil set in the hours that had led them to this venture in the night, guarding their post, their charge, under the sedation of a fist impacting his head enough to count in clock tower chimes, the back of his skull smacking the ground he'd been brought down on in the same number.  
  
Bud and Lou allowed the cubs to launch forward, try and make the woman and the other two feel better with licks to their ankles and pressed fur and paws to their feet and knees. The adult hyenas did not partake, because they knew that no amount of cuddling would make the fine doctors feel better at Harley still missing and the monster beyond the door still a hindrance on their lives.

* * *

 _(Past... Mere in the Amount of Tea Time)_  
  
“Authorities believe that the explosions that laid waste to the complex just outside of the protected swampland was set off and originally planted by the infamous Clown Prince of Crime early this morning in an attempt to murder his associates in the League of Shadows and possibly an unknown female that was captured on camera, but has yet been found. The Justice League chose not to leave comments on the exact chain of events, but Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter and a small group of the League's proteges were first on scene mere minutes after the explosion--”  
  
The giant wide screen TV that sat against the wall in the Metrotower's cafeteria _(in case the world started ending and members needed to be informed STAT, Steel and Cyborg had justified, not to watch national sports championships)_ quickly went to black and one red streak and a red-on-white streak materialized in front of the black box just before the remote made contact to break the screen to pieces.  
  
Wally caught the remote and Bart held up his hands and arms in what was supposed to be a placating gesture. From the very back of the room, both pissed as hell but one slightly more than the other, Dick stood next to Tim chewing aggressively on a glazed cinnamon doughnut and Tim typed at his palm pilot at the speed of light, looking over the surveillance images and videos on the disaster that had happened before the League had participated.  
  
“Okay,” Wally started, setting the remote next to the TV and walking back over to the Gotham heroes, like a handler of lions at the zoo, “Cat Grant could really stand to talk a little less, but no need to take it out on the expensive things that are technically League property.”  
  
Nightwing shrugged, swallowing and licking some sugar and glaze off of his gloved thumb, “Batman paid for it.”  
  
“But he still makes _you_ pay for stuff when _you_ break it,” Wally insisted, sitting at a table across from the other two and started in on some twenty-seven cheeseburgers with onions as Bart continued for him.  
  
“And that's, like, what, seven-hundred dollars on a rookie cop's salary. You'd be eating nothing but cereal and ramen for months, dude.”  
  
“ _I_ didn't throw the thing!”  
  
“Oh, right. Seven-hundred dollars on a high school student's allowance.”  
  
Tim tuned out the sounds of impertinence in all the voices surrounding him, continuing on with looking at the time stamps and trying to pinpoint at exactly what time before the bomb went off that Harley had gotten out of the blast radius. Batman had been too busy to find it, but since Red Robin couldn't lay out his frustrations on the psychopath that had--according to the video pixels and witness accounts from Icicle, Icicle Junior, Count Vertigo, Cheshire, fourteen henchmen that weren't unconscious or being rushed to the nearest burn units and Bane _(once the swelling in his jaw and tongue went down and anyone could understand what he was saying)_ \--stabbed the woman at least five times, smashed her head into a wall twice and might have broken the ribs that Bane hadn't.  
  
She wasn't as much a lover of trapdoors as her ex, so Tim just wanted to know WHY Batman didn't seem too worried her making it out alive more than anything. He at least owed her enough to care about that.

* * *

  
_(Past...Dawn Approaching)_  
  
“'Scuse me!”  
  
Harley paused in swinging her mallet through the air towards Joker to allow Cameron--“Oh my fucking god, Joar, could you feed your kid a little extra—he looks like he'd fit into a woman's size 0!”--to get out of the hall he'd been exiting, too close for comfort to the clown that was bleeding from his broken nose and could hardly see through the swollen eye that was compliment of the blonde's elbow pounding into the side of his head when she hadn't been knocking the air out of him through kicks to the groin.  
  
The walking ice-pop tried not to take offense at the crazy woman on a kamikaze mission critiquing his father on his parenting skills as she let him get out of the way, but the obvious shock stayed put on his face even as his father managed to turn pretty close to the kind of raging fury that meant the possibility of a stroke.  
  
“Nice etiquette there, Harls, learn that from Joney on your days off?”  
  
Aaaand, they were back.  
  
Cameron didn't like to show weakness in doing something so childish as, oh, hiding behind his father, but the Joker was in a fight with his Ex-Wife _(break that down, think about that—the worst psychopath ever having a living spouse that left them and took some of their stuff and was still walking around and had the stones a Nazi officer would envy to come back to YELL at the psychopath for forgetting to do something nearly a decade ago—fuck, they were all gonna die)_ over his inability to follow simple instructions. It was gonna get worse before it got better, and really, it did well to put something between himself and flying debris.  
  
The mallet missed Joker's head, but before he could gloat, Harley was using the stick as a brace and swung herself, full-body, into a twirl that landed a direct foot into his face.  
  
“You had _one_ job, Jackie! One job, in our entire marriage and somehow, you fucked it up!”  
  
“You'll have to be more specific, Harley; there's a lot of stuff I've never cared about in our 'relationship',” oh, fuck, he used the fingers for quote marks, they were gonna die in that hideout, _soon_ , “That you would consider a job that I've never done.”  
  
“Perhaps I should illustrate your multitude of failings in a light bulb joke, then. Would you be able to care about that, you worthless fucking loser?”  
  
Dead quiet.  
  
Joar suddenly, politely as someone of his standing ever could, pointed towards one of the exits and carefully pressed Cameron and some of the other villains that were highly interested in living in that direction, “You know, I think we'll leave you two alone now.”  
  
That executive decision, in hindsight, was probably the reason they all lived to be arrested.

 


	13. Oh No, He's Hot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> -:-  
> It's not an OTP until you have a cute carrying headcanon...  
> -Xavier (tumblr?)
> 
> -:-  
> My skin is covered with sharp spikes, that will stab you like a thousand knives!  
> A hug would be nice, but hug my flower with your eyes.  
> -Juno soundtrack.

_**Blood along the back of the head, warm and sticky in the dark hair matted with debris and filth of the surroundings broken about.** _ __  
  
This really shouldn't have come as a surprise to her, but the Creeper was a helluva lot heavier than he looked, either standing up or flopped down over some rubble in the middle of some back alley in the East End of Gotham where he could be gutted for his boa if he wasn't a super hero and thus far invulnerable to most harm.  
  
If he were conscious, anyway.  
  
The question still remained why it seemed that the universe decided that it HAD to be her to carry the idiot to safety, but she'd been cursing his weight over her back so much that she was forgetting to address that concern three flights up the staircase of the building she'd only been in once before—half a friggin' year ago—looking for the room she recalled he'd opened so she could borrow some clothes. If she were really lucky, it was actually where he might have lived and not just some poor bastard who's apartment he'd broken into because it was convenient.  
  
She was not feeling up to getting arrested for doing something relatively nice that she hadn't _**wanted** _ _to do in the first place._  
  
“Fucking...dumb...stupid...irrational...dumb...dumb...dummy!”  
  
Each pause was accompanied by taking a step up the staircase. Harley really would have preferred the elevator, but that actually seemed to have someone stationed there to push the buttons for the tenants and no way was she making small talk with a guy that was probably going to call the cops no matter what she said about the unconscious lunatic over her shoulder.  
  
She should probably have been curious as to why he hadn't told her to stop on her way to the door to the stairs, but she really wanted to take it on good faith that maybe this was a real sign that this was really, really someplace Creeper hung around a lot. She would not ask a question and come back down to the first floor because maybe it was just that the elevator guy was on drugs and too stoned to realized that she was real and Creeper was real and bleeding all over her coat.  
  
The steps were polished and long and in the last fifteen minutes she'd overestimated going up one step after another, after another, after another and slipped so she had to brace on the railing or plant her feet solidly or almost smashed her face onto the next step or almost drop the fool over the side so he'd go splat.  
  
He was _**so** _ _going to owe her for ruining her day off when he woke up. She'd dropped perfectly good coffee in the alley when she'd tripped over him and there was stains from the drink on her pants, to boot._   
  


* * *

  
Half in and half out the window of a dilapidated building on the East End of Gotham that should have been demolished months ago but had actually been bought up by some witless sucker looking to remodel it and left it alone for the time being, Cameron Mahkent, AKA, Icicle Jr. took pause.  
  
He'd just gotten away from a job at the docks that had gone bad when the Justice Kiddie League _(would it be so bad for the big guys just to name the team of sidekicks? Cameron was starting to feel a little sorry for the degrading name—it lacked dignity on both ends, no matter what his dad said about it)_ had busted in; his right leg was a little swollen from what he was sure was a break to the bone that was accompanied with a long gash along his hip when Superboy had tossed him against a ship hull.  
  
Some of the walls of the apartment he usually hid in when he had to get away from heroes and couldn't find Joar in the chaos were knocked down to nothing but a couple wooden beams half crumbling and splinted at the edges, dust and wall rock scattered around and piled onto plastic sheets. In the center of the half-organized reconstruction and demolition was a young man that could hardly have been older than Icicle Jr. with thick leather gloves hiked up to his elbows, faded and torn jeans accenting the workman's boots tied to his feet and the six-pack of his stomach grimy and goose-pimpled in the cold air. Cameron found his brain half-wondering where he'd put his shirt and coat and what could have possessed him to remove it in the barely twenty degree weather when he glanced over at the meta.   
  
He barely stopped in his work with a ruddy tape measure, setting a huge hammer against a wall that still stood but with craters and dents in it and showed his teeth in a grin aimed at the unexpected visitor.  
  
“Well, hello there. Didn't know there was gonna be anyone else dropping in here today.”  
  
Cameron tried not to flinch at the smile, reminded vaguely of convicts in Belle Reve that had similar looks that had been convicted of assault on police and mass destruction of public and private property with explosives, “Who the hell are you?”  
  
“Just the guy taking measurements, bagging trash and knocking down walls for the jerk who thinks he can utilize this dump for some yuppie scumbags looking to buy up new property. What are you doing here?”  
  
“Leaving.”  
  
“Ah, don't be like that Cameron; it's not like I was gonna call the cops on a guy who looks like he bled all the way up the fire escape.”  
  
“I did not—wait,” Quixotic blue eyes blinked back into the den, taking in the all too friendly smile on the brunette's face and suddenly finding the not-a-sledge-hammer less threatening when he spotted tiny diamonds etched into the finish of the wood; a familiar feeling of calm accompanying the air, recognition on the heels of absent hope, “Nobody calls me Cameron, least of all a civilian.”  
  
  
  


* * *

  
“Shouldn't you have regenerated by now?”  
  
Harley had found the door to the apartment she recalled Creeper having taken her to and was half delighted and half suspicious when she found it unlocked, but she wasn't going to think twice about it when there was no evidence of breaking and entering and nobody poking around with guns looking for the meta. She'd just stepped in and locked the bolt in place behind her, setting Creeper down not-too-nicely on the couch she didn't remember being there before but was glad it existed to relieve his weight from pressing down on her spine and head.  
  
That was thirty minutes ago and she would have liked very much to just leave him, but...   
  
“Congratulations Joan, all that harping about moving from high functioning to borderline sociopathy seems to be paying off,” Harley ground out through her teeth as she continued to bide her time waiting for the man to gain consciousness by washing the less than stellar dirty dishes in the sink, the bubbles still full white and sticking to her elbows each time she brought a plate up to her face to examine it for missed debris and then toweled it off to set on the blue towel that must have been used to separate the clean dishes from the dusty counter. It was actually quite nice in the apartment from what she'd gather wandering around the living area for fifteen minutes, poking Creeper in the face every so often to see he was still breathing, and then pacing back over to the fridge to find it surprisingly clean and filled with food that most health consultants would pride themselves on.  
  
The pictures on the walls could have been better, with actual people in them instead of cattle grazing in a green field in the country or what seemed to be a lot of cars from the 1950's clean and renewed, but compared to where she assumed Creeper spent his time _(she had imagined jungle gyms and inappropriate swing sets and lava lamps before she'd smacked her head on her Arkham office desk and freaked out Hiro a little)_ this really wasn't that awful.  
  
Until she turned and almost dropped the plate she was drying when the buzzer at his door went off.  
  
Hissing through the speaker came the questioning, rather familiar voice Harley had heard apologize to her in the Justice League coffee pick-up area, some other voices in the background in the static, _ “Creeper, you up there partner?” _   
  
Letting herself uncurl from the (rather embarrassing) half-bent position she took up as a defense mechanism—a useful trick when gunshots, sharp projectiles and such were constantly flying at her more often than most civilized human beings considered normal—forever ago, Harley sighed and looked over again at the man on the sofa, still unconscious and pretty useless for the most likely of events to happen.  
  
The buzzer went off again and she set the cloth and dish on the counter, fingers on both hands spongy and crinkled save for the small patches under her nails that had a tendency to collect caches of both her own blood and other people's when someone got more hurt than usual. Those spots of skin were a sticky, dulled brown and leaked onto the button opposite the buzzer when she pressed down on it—not really all that different from her letting someone into her apartment building, except that the noise that told her they were coming up wasn't a shaky click-clack, but a ringing chime not dissimilar to an electronic bell.  
  
“...So, _ so _ going to owe me later.”   
  


* * *

  
“Sugar or milk with the coffee?”  
  
Cameron scrunched up his nose at the thought of losing even a smidge of the taste of coffee he'd been offered being offed and ruined by dairy or sugar and shook his head, trying not to question too much why anyone like this Jason would help him out of his pretty obviously illegal situation he'd gotten into. The bandages Jason had provided and the antiseptic had been too nice to turn down, as well as the beanbag in the corner of the room coupled with the half-hour old pizza, so he'd just play nice for the moment—A character flaw his father picked at endlessly but something Icicle Jr. couldn't seem to shake off for the life of him.  
  
The meta-human fiddled with the end of the bandage Jason had used to wrap a gash along the length of his arm and asked for plain coffee, clicking his teeth to resist chewing the bandage end shorter so it didn't chafe his skin. The taller—maybe older, it was hard to tell with Jason's coloring and muscle mass—teen just nodded and set to pouring some of the microwaved blend which Stephanie had left him on her way to pick up Klarion into the mug Jason had been using as opposed to just letting Icicle Junior scald his tongue on the thermos.  
  
“Shouldn't it bother you why I'm all cut up like this and...stuff?”  
  
“If I were even remotely more normal, maybe. For now, just drink the coffee and deal with the rest when Baby Bird's team comes looking for you. If I'm lucky they won't try and wreck the place this time.”

 


	14. Photogenic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> -:-  
> "In the Beginning there was the Word."  
> "No. In the Beginning there was the Deed."  
> -Faust and Mauricius, Faust (2011)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long. I had other things to do. Like attend a wedding involving my father and undergo watching a useless training video at work that told me nothing I didn't already know.

He can tell just by looking at her, hovering near the edge of the kitchen, constantly peering at them through the bangs that had grown lank and listless with eyes like living pools of marble blue-white ice, that all the regrets of her life had been stitched into her increasingly brutalized skin and were being carried around like the winter pelt of a feral woods animal to keep her—not so much from going crazy again—from returning to a dangerous place.  
  
Vigilante didn't know the woman except through words spilled through the mouths of other League members who found out Creeper was courting her, and what he'd heard had not been at all pleasant, but all of them couldn't possibly be right because when they'd walked through the door opened to them, and gone tense at the sight of Creeper unconscious and his blood on her shoulders _(because, damn, if the rumors were actually true and that was actually her blood then perhaps his thoughts on this little thing circulating were not so far fetched and ouch)_...   
  
She'd been frank and almost unconcerned with their questions of why and simply waved over to the unconscious hero, "If you could wake him up, then I can leave. It's not my fault I _found_ him like this, I just had this stupid notion I should bring him here to keep him from being knifed in the gutter. Plus I wanna know what can knock him out; God knows I've tried anything else on him, this would have to be quite the trick."  
  
She didn't _have_ to help him and she didn't _have_ to stay, but she did, so how could she be all bad?   
  
He would think this in the after-thought, but not in the present, because in the present he was with three other League members, looking to find a teammate who was in a battle and suddenly he wasn't. And in the moment, they found Creeper injured and passed out and a human monster standing in his apartment like a comfortable, commonplace Satan doing dishes and looking at them like something with a lot of teeth and many claws that knew it would just be so easy to kill them, ingest their meat and walk—possibly trot or canter or hobble with the obvious bruising at the base of the knees—back to its own disgusting den.  
  
It was irrational, but Vigilante's hand went to the gun in his holster at his second look at her, eyes narrowing and the general protective nature he had for most everyone taking over his more rational thought process.  
  
The vague realization that she should have left _before_ they crossed the threshold of the doorway was just working its way onto Harley's face as Creeper's other _(probable, if they indeed knew where he lived, anyway)_ friends aside from the cowboy walked in.   
  
Red Tornado was holding a first-aid kit probably loaded with drugs and barely looked at her before moving beside the unconscious idiot that was to be his patient for the foreseeable time frame in the apartment. She could almost be half offended that he barely registered her as a threat in his core processor, but just instead made the mental note to be a little less personal around him. Spending time looking after Red Robin and Robin and occasionally Nightwing meant that he knew her considerably better than the other three conscious busy-bodies bustling into the room. Hell, he'd seen her yell at Batman for being derelict in his duties as a parent to the Birdies; there was undoubtedly a magic eraser taken to any thoughts he'd had of her being dangerous ( _unprovoked_ ) after that.  
  
"...Do you know which of his attackers drugged him?"  
  
"I wasn't even _there_."  
  
The second hero behind Vigilante came in and gave an obnoxious _(hypocritical, she knows, which is why she doesn't say so out loud)_ whistle at the state of Creeper, wandering over like the curious, over-sized Golden Retriever he probably was in a previous existence _(or Labradoodle, given his hair,_ _ **pfft**_ _)_ to start poking at yellow, rock hard muscle to find what Harley would bet money on was the puncture to go with the drugs that had caused him to be, well, responsible for Harley being boxed in by the hero brigade come to rescue his ass and most likely make the end of her day fairly worse than it absolutely had to be.  
  
The little smirk that set up along the healthy looking dimples at the corners of Vibe's mouth twitched in humor when he actually did manage to find the mark of a hole, trying to heal but oozing where Harley hadn't been able to see it under the red furred boa. And it was possibly quite a large needle, most likely once used on large African born animals with tough scales or leathery features not needed on swifter, stronger, more agile things.  
  
Wouldn't that just be the tin cap on the bottle—someone had needed an elephant dart just to attempt something new on Creeper. It had worked, so slightly less funny, but not to the loon when he woke up. Or maybe it would be.  
  
One date she hadn't really wanted to go on in the first place _(that actually turned out nice and when she got home and was falling asleep she absently realized that Joker had never happily taken her out or paid fairly for anything in their relationship hit her like luke warm water after sitting in a sauna; she fell asleep without much problems and woke up on time the next morning)_ did not mean Harley would know 100% how Creeper would respond to a given situation.  
  
Sighing absently, she looked away from the hole the two were prodding at to look back at Vigilante, possibly to give him a scary smile, to see if she could make him flinch, jump, shaky.  
  
Harley found herself flinching back herself, in disgust and severe annoyance _(the others would later think of some old Gothic movies or satires involving God, angels, demons and Satan; but not just then, since in this metaphor SHE was the devil, and such thoughts didn't occur in the presence of perceived evil)_  when instead of distrustful ranch hand, horse loving brown eyes, she met loving, understanding blue eyes with a kind smile.  
  
She didn't like Dove when he was with his brother and she felt guilty trying to grind them both into the pavement the last time the League fought her and Joker years ago with some other villains making the whole lot of them miserable— _his brother had enjoyed the fighting, the blood, the loud explosions, but Dove had kept going on and on about resolving this fighting with talk and passive touches that made Joker keep trying to shoot him with everything in his jacket and Hawk intervening when Harley tried to throw bricks from fallen buildings at his head_ —and she sure as hell didn't want to be stuck in a tiny apartment with him now that she wasn't packing.  
  
Well, no, she was packing, but trying to knife a guy in front of his friends for no reason other than being _nice_ would get her in trouble.  
  
"You weren't there when he was hurt, and you weren't obligated to help him, but... you brought him home?"  
  
Harley made a face, replying without answering, "Oh, my God, I hate everything right now. But _you_ especially, Siddhartha," and went back to the sink, turning the water on full blast, boiling hot on the dishes and the open wounds along her hands, so her attention would be divided away from the sound of his voice and the others continuing to eye her, even as Vibe started with the vibrations near Creeper's puncture wound _(she'd heard of it before, a kind of localized full-body, muscle massage to made the skin less tough when more invulnerable League members or people in general got hurt and they had to operate or something; she'd read files she'd once stolen from Amanda Waller about STAR Labs using it on Superman a few times back when they could be trusted)_ and the android started loading up a rather large syringe full of meds from different little vials held in his chest compartment. Groovy.


	15. The Reason I Tell You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for being amazingly late adding this chapter, but this is me in procrastination mode.

-:-  
...this story is a mirror story which rhymes with horror story, almost but not quite.  
-Margaret Atwood.

* * *

 **Perhaps** :

This rather tall stick figure with a book bag on his shoulder, as well as the mathematician seemed to go into a state of catatonic shock at the realization of exactly who the woman was that held the elevator for them and made idle conversation with the profiler about the building structure of Belle Reve for lack of the customary music that usually came with elevator rides. Their own teams milling about in the guards' lounge area  _equally_  shocked when Waller had introduced the rest of the profilers from Quantico and the FBI agents from Los Angeles taking in the bandaged woman that lead the—apparently-youngest members of their teams into the room with a limp and an utterly 'so-done-with-this' expression directed towards Waller.

Joan and the interns tried not to cringe when the lead agent from LA grabbed hold of his brother's arm and yanked him towards the table full of the mathematical probability paperwork Hiro had been drooling over earlier and the dark (rather attractive) profiler from the BAU stood up half-casually, half-protective when the requested member of Arkham's lead staff limped over to one of the crappy lounge room tables not in use and gave agent Reid a half-grin. Agent Morgan would probably tease Reid endlessly for being so flustered in the presence of such a disturbing person, but  _later_.

"So," Harley practically hissed over at Amanda, The Wall, Waller, folding up the sunglasses she had worn the entire ride over to Belle Reve because—fucking sunlight; "You couldn't just take my saying no over the phone five whole times. You had to call in a small fleet of government drones to verify in person why Black Manta should not be released on his own recognizance and most of the USEFUL Arkham staff just to try extra hard to see if you can get what you want."

"Releasing David Hyde so the United States government can allow him to serve out his time as a servant of the law requires more than just you laughing into the phone's receiver, clown," the dark woman frowned in absolute distaste at the obviously damaged woman resting her head on the back of her chair like a freshman in high school.

"Of course that would have to include the approval of two different units in the FBI, too, wouldn't it? Or was calling them in even your idea, Mandy?"

* * *

 **OR** :

"That wasn't nice, Harley."

"And yet, we saved some five hundred bucks and a whole day sitting on a plane. All for the low, low price of this nifty little thing I bought from Klarion and however much it costs for the cops to pay the dry-cleaners to relieve their clothing of the vomit they couldn't keep to themselves."

Joan had barfed too, but Harley wasn't going to poke the (fuzzy-snuggle-muffin) bear. No need to ruin her good mood at the Central City cops and her cops blowing their lunch at teleporting without beforehand knowledge by feeling guilty and annoyed at the probable speech about respect Joan was definitely going to give her later. It wasn't in her to even feel guilty, too busy taking in some vindictive gratification for their suffering before they straightened themselves out and lead her to Iron Heights where she would have the pleasure of analyzing Warden Wolfe (the asshole that broke her arm the last time she was in the city and in their custody when she hadn't even been resisting) half-dead under the body of a plant Ivy had left to fester in an old warehouse he'd stumbled upon looking for Captain Cold and Weather Wizard. The Central cops had begged Ivy for help as it had attached to Wolfe's chest, slithered into his mouth and was slowly feeding off of his blood and heat until he had finally lost consciousness half a day ago.

No surprise to Joan when Detective Bullock had actually remembered something annoyingly useful about Harley and Ivy and convinced Jeremiah to send the two of them to help. Joan was to keep things under as much control as possible as the cops didn't trust her colleague worth a damn and had guns and tazers and other stuff inside the prison well known for its rather Draconian methods of dealing with "troublemakers".

The sigh that escaped Joan was sympathetic however, as they addressed the police and got down to being pointed towards the right entrance to the building. She couldn't blame Harley for being a little wicked before the main event, as it were. None of  _them_  were tasked with having to remove the plant from Wolfe by eating it off of him.

* * *

 **OR** :

"This was entirely too boring and impractical to have traveled cross country to come and sit on our asses for three hours just to see. What was there to listen to that hasn't already been said seventy-trillion times before?"

The very back of the auditorium (really, ANY auditorium in the known world), though always a practically filthy place to sit in  _(people tended to smoke cigarettes and cigars and leave the butts behind on the floor scattered among the ashes; they spit; the cleaning crew often held off wiping down the area until nobody was sitting there, which never happened because it was the best place not to be obvious in plagiarizing others work in little notebooks and for the reasons already noted)_ possessed the perfect opportunity to bitch and whine and stretched out cramped legs or wave arms above the head and yawn loud and rude without it actually seeming to be just that.

The interns, though entirely agreeing with Harley, kept their opinions to themselves for the time being as the practical parade of psyche professors and students cleared out; handfuls in the bakers dozen of the lot of them thinking themselves not-at-all-obvious when they turned their heads or leaned a little over to stare at the Arkham group as they spoke lowly to their friends or acted like plains vermin keeping an eye on something that could eat them.

"It wasn't that bad," Joan hissed, half-hearted even to herself as she dusted off the back of her simple plaid dress and lightly booted Harley's knee to get her moving out of the embarrassing position she had taken up in her own uncomfortable seat, legs up and over the chair in front of her and blocking the exit for her and the interns, "Some of it was interesting."

"You can't even lie like a boss."

The blonde still didn't move even when Joan had picked up her pamphlet of the day's groups and presentations  _(STAR Labs and their discoveries on microscopic differences between Atlantean depression and ways to combat it with land-based techniques; Hub City had presented a case on schizophrenic impressionisms being presented in as much a way to understanding as there had ever been, which had included colored brain scans that hadn't meant anything to anyone in their own group except for Hiro—whom had admittedly been fairly unimpressed; Central and Keystone city had brought on a large-scale model of the human brain and little figurines to showcase the differences between meta-humans and regular humans and how certain situations effected them differently)_  and smacked her on the back of the head with it.

She was grinning, shark precise and so very solid in her knowledge of the absolute waste of time the hours had been; the interns just decided that moving around her would be less time-consuming than waiting for the little Mexican standoff between their two superiors to end in anything really civil. Kate had to pick Becky up bridal style and Hiro had to carry her cane as the former soldier stepped over the back of the chair row in front of them and Hiro scurried to follow on the way out the door.

Joan started tapping her foot and it echoed through the space of the room as everyone else had gone. Even the professors from Star City wouldn't chat it up with Joan near the known former criminal-turned back to psychologist; even  _despite_  Dr. Leland having gone to college and having dated a few of the others respectively.

* * *

 **OR** :

"God, you people are so fucking useless."

Lois Lane and Steve Lombard both dropped, ass first, into the window washer elevator perpetually parked outside the seventeenth floor of the Daily Planet to clean up bird shit that seemed more likely to accumulate there as opposed to the other hundred or so windows the building took pride in constantly watching Superman fly by.

Kate and Becky absently noted how nice it would have been if Superman wasn't currently out of town and in outer space attending to a situation on Mars with J'onn J'onzz, leaving the building of perpetually targeted, busy-body newsmen and women to fend for themselves as yet another plan of Luthor's  _(or, it seemed like it had to be Luthor—Harley kept yelling his name at the cameras no doubt attached to the heads of the androids and crab-like robots chasing after the presently escaping group—his name_ **along** _with insinuations about his mother, at the top of her lungs, for every level of the building they'd been chased through)_  had taken place a mere twenty minutes after the Arkham group had entered for their interviews on stuff that Jeremiah hadn't really briefed them on.

Neither of the girls that had been sent with Harley for the day denied Harley's statement of facts or made to defend the reporters as Becky hit the switch for the elevator to descend towards the ground as safely and quickly as possible, while Kate held onto the rope length Harley had tossed her after tying the end around her waist and jumping off their little vessel to scale the building with the fireman's ax and fire extinguisher she'd gotten from one of the many-many-many cabinets the Planet kept for obvious reasons.

Both of them absently kept track of the robotic heads and appendages that fell down to earth as she made way to either get rid of the really big spider-looking robot the smaller ones kept coming from, or to do something about what they assumed had been bombs they had been planting with the missed shots fired at both Lane and Lombard.

(Neither Becky or Kate had a comment for the rescued reporters later that day, "Does this sort of thing happen often in Gotham?" "How is it that you were able to remain so calm in the face of such imminent danger?" "Has Harley Quinn actually been a hero all these years?" No comment, but much, oh so much laughter at  _that_ question.

Both of them had been coached on this sort of thing before by both Harley and Joan, because, frankly, questions with answers just lead to more questions, which lead to headaches, which lead to the threat of them both being fired. And they were just enjoying the frustration radiating off of Lane when they kept their mouths shut and absently observed Big Blue's favorite photographer headed towards the no-mans-land that was the temporary scrap yard of the destroyed robots; a first-aid kit was gripped in one hand, black coffee in the other and no camera in sight. From Harley's position atop the husk of the main robot that had indeed been carrying the bomb, they could just barely hear her use the word 'ladyboy' at Jimmy, but despite her tone and how scary she looked caked in blood and grime, they had to give him points for not changing his mind.

They both headed over to help the kid when Harley took the coffee but tried to walk away when he opened the kit to pull out peroxide and cotton balls.)

* * *

_Joan Leland smirked and sipped at her coffee as Gotham's mayor and quite a few members of neighboring cities' psychiatric institution sat, stunned, in Arkham's staff lounge at her probably favorite colleague taking her own coffee and walking out on the meeting like it was just a big hole in her busy day. Not worth the time to stay, let alone make meaningless chit-chat with some of the powers that be when she could be finishing some paperwork on Poison Ivy coming back to have unsupervised sessions with her, or she could be stopping a riot brewing in C Wing, or she could just go to her office and take a nap._

_Mayor Hill turned to Joan, red faced and fuming and tried, perhaps much too hard, to gain her sympathy, "My heart goes out to you, my dear; I can't imagine why Dr. Arkham keeps that horrible woman around."_

 

 


	16. Half Eaten Twilight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, there had to be some significant change in relationships eventually...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look, I updated just in time for Christmas. Tiny holiday cheer for the person who--ah, forget it. Hope this is enjoyable, see you later.

_-:-_   
_I'm significant!_   
_-Calvin and Hobbs._

* * *

_Monday's daughter is full of grace_ ~

There is something to be said for getting up in the half-darkness of night falling down over the world just before daylight lifts its head along the horizon and takes it upon itself to paint the plains above the world pink and gold and all those other colors that were entirely more friendly than they had any right to be in Gotham.

But Harley digressed.

Letting herself rise from sleep that just wouldn't come after the events of the previous day and workload _(Ivy was being nice and they had started therapy together again, but Joan was still required to be in the room; a silent white clothed shadow sitting in the corner, pretending to do paperwork while her colleague muscled her way through the gag-reflex required with each sip of the tea Jervis had recommended her and Pamela sat silently, looking for all the world like she actually wanted to converse with Harley, but wouldn't do it unless the blonde started the words-which she wasn't going to do just yet)_ , Harley left the light switch in each room off, wandering through to the kitchen to open the fridge.

Coffee, while heavily desired, was ignored in favor of the three gleaming red and green apples she still wasn't quite sure how to feel about after they'd been left on her window, along with a little note still pinned to the apple that was green with little red-orange freckles near the stem.

_"Thank you for helping me. -Creeper."_

The ninety percent of herself that retained memories and feelings and knowledge of years of being tricked and screwed over and fucked up by the world at large had been screaming at her since she found the fruit to dump them down the disposal or light them on fire or chuck them into Gotham river ( _where the fish would eat them or they'd simply dissolve_ )...

But.

Rubbing the rings under her eyes and then running her fingers through the rat's nest her hair often became after a few hours of insufferable tossing and turning, Harley pinched the stem of the apple that still had the note attached and unpinned it from the wood that held the apple once aloft to a tree. Scrutinizing had never been a big thing for her before and, looking at the writing, she decided that she really wasn't very good at it.

This seemed marginally similar to that situation she'd read long ago, when she still wore pigtails and considered her father and brother-and sometimes mother, though that was so foggy in memory it might as well have never existed at all-giants meant to carry her around smiling. Catholic mother and Jewish father; never could figure out what to teach their children or where to take them on holy days, but they had tried, she could never say that hadn't at least tried for a short time. It didn't go well, of course, but she could give them credit for keeping her interest in the more fantastical religious stories that to a child must have been both terrifying and wonderful right up and until said father and brother found their way into trouble and said mother died of alcohol.

The garden where only two people existed. Animals abound that trusted but left man and woman alone. Red-probably red because the texts varied, but it was most probable as a prime color-fruit hanging from a tree, out of reach of hand and out of thought save for the word of warning about them. The snake that wasn't a snake.

Maybe when woman bit into the wisdom, it didn't taste like fruit, but like blood, or something equally vile. Ignorance is bliss, but then you know and the knowing turns bliss to something less desired.

Air huffed out of parted lips that hadn't worn rouge or balm in days. Teeth gripped tight to the apple while her hands were otherwise occupied.

It tasted less bitter than green apples usually did, some of the juice beading down her throat when her hands were finished with the other deed and gripped the fruit to tear off a piece of it, chewing and swallowing as she made her way back to bed. If not to sleep, then to at least rest, still and quiet, eyes closed and stomach working through the process of digestion.

The thank you note stared out through the kitchen door where she'd hung it with the laminated sketch of four hands occupied in cat's cradle turned into a magnet.

It wasn't like he could poison her.

* * *

T _uesday's son is fair of face_ ~

Doing reports on under reported crime is often tedious and leads to nights either searching out more crime than usual with Creeper laughing like a junkie or Jack settling down at a bar to drink waiting for his laundry to finish three blocks over in the building he has rarely used since trying to get closer to a tangible relationship.

But tonight was a little different. He was at the bar, a full glass of old scotch in front of him, ice cubes melting with one rising atop the others, everyone in the place a little more cheery than they had any right to be with it being below zero with the sun about to rise outside the doors that made the bar turn into perpetual night as it swallowed the light of the sun with black glass. There was no laundry waiting for him and Creeper was being unusually quiet-had been so since since he woke up with other League members hovering over him or browsing his apartment... Had been silent since Dove had smiled at him and looked over towards the kitchen _(his own kitchen that they had never been in and he had no memory of being able to get to despite it being near where he distinctly recalled passing out in an alley full of trash)_ and told the most beautiful woman he'd ever known that he'd be just fine; her glancing at him as she slipped on her blood stained coat and walked out with Vigilante muttering under his breath when she shut the door behind her.

Sighing, Jack knocked the burning liquid back and relished in the burn for about half a minute before waving the bartender back over.

"Scotch at this hour? What's the occasion?"

Dark eyes flicked over to the seat on his right and the sane part of Creeper nodded absently to the bartender to add another drink to the bar for his compatriot.

Well, not compatriot, exactly, as that implied a kind of fellow feeling that neither Jack Ryder nor Vic Sage felt from one to the other at all. But Jack was buzzed, so he would give his brain a break.

"Trying not to think... so no occasion at all. Yourself?"

"Actually I came looking for you."

"...Why?"

"Uh, let's see...You haven't been to the Watchtower since Vigilante and the others turned in your report, you haven't been answering the League comm. link, Batman has seen you still watching over your general territory and turning in the unwanted of the world, but without the usual gusto and, how should I put this...Batman's covert ops team at Mount Justice kinda freaked out when you hung from the ceiling and watched Boy Wonders One through Three in battle simulation nearly in tears."

Jack lifted his hand to point at the ginger in not-quite-justified indignation, "Okay, first of all, only half of those things was actually MY fault. Second of all, I'm only a part-time member, I don't have to pick up the comm. if I don't want to. I actually have a job that I get occupied with."

"Which leads you to wander into a bar before sunrise."

* * *

_Wednesday's girl is full of woe~_

"I did not know you could still do that..."

Temptation to roll her eyes into the back of her head until she went blind or they turned over, ripping the binding tissue away from the back of her skull, was so much settled into Harley that she almost gave into the subconscious; but no, she settled for leveling Green River Killer eyes on the tiny child braced against the Arkham lounge's counter sipping black coffee and waiting for the security team to bring down the reports they had forgotten to mail the police six weeks prior. It seemed Batman was trying to teach his spawn a new form of humility that really wasn't getting across.

"What, bleed? Sweat? Get the living shit beat out of me on the way to work? You'll have to be a bit more specific, Birdy."

"Blush."

The gears that had been blowing and grinding and gnashing all at full tilt, suddenly and without fail, came to a halt that seemed to physically make the woman ill and simultaneously pull up a mental shield. Like crappy, drugs in a Breathalyzer, used on simpletons at a Reno magic show kind of moment before shit gets real.

"Did I hear you wrong," was the first thing that popped out of her mouth, and the second was, "Because I know you are not that stupid."

"Doctor Quinzel, you are very red in the face and you are tending to flowers that I know for a fact Pamela Isley did not grow for you," Robin stated, shifting his coffee in semi-circles while looking over the rim of his cup at the gardening sheers Harley set down atop a pile of laminated sketches of dead girls laid to rest in an English field, at a Jamaican themed restaurant, tucked inside a teacup fit for a ride at Disneyland and, creepier still, at the edge of a mellow river; compliments of one the non-violent sociopaths on Harley's register, no doubt.

"I have a fever of over a hundred degrees attributed to my body fighting an infection originating from being stabbed in the ribs six times. I'm _flushed_ , not blushing, brat."

Okay, no, that was not supposed to make him grin like a shark. That was the exact _opposite_ of what she was going for.

She pushed the sheers and the pictures into the folder she had carried them in with and very, very carefully picked the crimson columbine flowers in their little glass pitcher up from her seat. No way was she going to stick around with that smile on this particular Robin's face. Uh-uh, nope, _No_.

* * *

_Thursday's boy has far to go~_

He had bundled himself up in his hideous brown and orange plaid sweater and grungy gray hoodie and faded denim jeans that made his ass virtually disappear into the fabric.

It was bad.

Stephanie found herself actually hesitating to buzz him into the building and _she_ was someone who had been on a date with Klarion and been ambushed by his crazy-ass-bitch on a broomstick-sick as fuck sister, had to knock out the stupid bitch with a tire iron conveniently left on the roof ( _it was very romantic, she thought; atop some abandoned building that had been a plant nursery overlooking the river and just close enough to where Jason was working construction that she could get a ride if Klarion had to bail out on account of how fucked up his life technically always was_ ) and then had to drag her unconscious boyfriend and their dinner to Jason's work to use the phone, where she had been just in time to find Jason making a new friend in Icicle Jr. and Red Robin and his team nearly burst in ( _not that Red Robin would have, not when Harley had been very specific about arresting injured people under the age of twenty-five when they were near Jason, Stephanie or Harley herself; but his teammates might have_ ).

Jack Ryder was nice and all, but still. Casual wear when he usually wore a suit ninety percent of the time did not bode well.

She continued to stare out the window and he continued to stare miserably up at her like she was a mall cop or even possibly an IRS agent.

"...Um, something I can help you with, Mr. Ryder?"

"Is Harley home?"

Stephanie allowed her face to crinkle and didn't even notice James and Johnny scamper behind her with Lou following them up to the roof.

"Sorry, no, she's on that trip to Metropolis to test her willpower with _not_ killing Lois Lane."

His face didn't change, and yet his reply was, "Okay, good," as he reached into his hoodie pouch and pulled out an object that Steph _knew_ didn't belong to him, dangling between his middle and pointer finger like they were infectious, "So I dodged a bullet returning these."

She really couldn't help herself, "You picked through her laundry; are you sick?"

The blue thong panties continued to dangle from his fingers, but he at least had the state of mind to react to her words; rolling his eyes and and sighing, "If I picked through her laundry to pilfer these, I wouldn't be returning them. She forget these in drying machine and they got mixed up with mine."

"It took you a week to return her underwear?"

"No, it took me a week to figure out how to return these without getting punched in the face. Should I leave them down here on the doorknob, or are you going to buzz me up?"

 _Buzzzzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Buzzzzz_.

* * *

 _Friday's person is loving and giving-which was the goal; seriously_ ~

A sticky note, silvery ocean green and quite wrinkled, was attached to the door, the writing a little sloppy and evidence of smearing not withstanding it was still quite a clear text to read. Such a little sentence, after all.

_"You're welcome, you little idiot. -Harley."_

Jack would have liked to think that the unmanly, incredibly girlish shriek that was sent forth from his mouth and echoed through the hallway of his apartment building went unnoticed by the neighbors each floor down, but really, that thought was pretty much only present because if he didn't use a little mental sedative, Creeper would have taken over and then he'd have to move.

There were tracks of snow in a dainty shoe size for boots that had lead him from his elevator to his doorway and the puddle in front of the wooden barrier definitely signaled that shoes had been stomped.

And then the tracks continued beyond where he could see them.

His keys were rather noisy and hopeful _(to Creeper and to Jack as the reporter shifted the two bag of groceries he'd been carrying unto one hip and into one arm, awkward in his gangliness and suddenly regretting that he was still wearing casual clothes that really made him and Creeper feel the cold of the holiday season settle in so he could turn off the heat that rushed to his head for the last twenty-odd days; miserable and thinking that he had shown weakness in his meta form)_ as he fumbled and finally slid the right one into the keyhole, opening the door to practically dump his belongings onto his sofa.

The door remained open as he followed what remained of the tracks of melted ice and slush into the kitchen and...

Tromping, heavy shoes went back to the door and shut it, the bolt sliding home and the chain clinking into its spot.

Pittering, deftly fine bare feet scurried back, clothes slightly torn left in their wake as invigorating laughter tore out through the window in the living area that was still open where the uninvited guest had left along the fire escape after depositing the present being kneaded and sniffed and clung to by entirely too eager hands.

Another sticky note, this one covered in micro-images of baby Rudolph, was pinned to the scarf Creeper wrapped around his neck and snuggled his nose into as he bounded to the window, regardless of Jack's railing against leaving it open because, _{"Please, oh, please, oh, please, the apartment manager is going to get on our case about the hardwood floors again!"}_ and, as he marveled over the stitches of black and white that made up the last scene of the feature The Nightmare Before Christmas, Creeper at least had the thought to leave it on the coffee table before indeed taking off to go pick up the slack he'd let happen while brooding over weeks.

He tucked the note under Jack's favorite nick-knack (a miniature replica of a life time Emmy award for entertainment that had hit the floor so many times it had many knocks and pings from the bottom to the top) and, just so he wouldn't have to listen to Jack complained, shut the window on his way out.

_"...For the record, I left before I could see anything. And, no, I have no idea what your identity is, so stop freaking everyone out, get off your moping, neurotic ass and get back to normal."_


	17. Grafting

_-:-_  
_No, no, no, no. Watch and **then** judge._  
_-Bo Burnham._

_-:-_  
_We are not special._  
_We are not crap or trash either._  
_We just are._  
_We just are and what happens just happens._  
_-Fight Club._

* * *

_"Oh my sweet Jesus—Hiro, get your ass in here and fix the air conditioning in Harley's office before we have to stuff her into Victor's cell again!"_

_Jack, pleasantly having got up that morning in good spirits to do his usual job in investigative reporting had been even more pleasantly surprised by his boss handing him the job of interviewing the employees of Arkham about the construction company they had hired to fix up their building and had assisted Joker in the escape that had left Joan appreciating her blonde co-worker significantly more and left Harley with another collection of scars—the company in question finally being prosecuted via Wayne Enterprises after some faulty circuitry in their security systems and the big man himself being very much unhappy._

_Creeper was feeling a lot more into it now that they'd walked into Harley's office to her half hanging out the window without a shirt._

_Without a bra as well._

_Both of them were too used to the blood and scars to even remotely react the way Joan was._

_The ruins of November had fallen to the wayside the day before yesterday and the pale white of unruined snow accented the heavily scarred torso with touches of light creeping along what used to be breasts but now lacked the proper excessive fat, muscle, defined contours and even nipples to be called anything but a chest. A Ken doll had more definition—but then, a Ken doll couldn't be cut open, to pieces, stitched and then put back together with cadaver parts from other people; some different ethnicities thrown in because their bodies were available and poor Leslie Thompkins had run out of Caucasian. Creeper couldn't complain; the dark skin from that motorcyclist had done wonders in healing with almost no scars along the breast that protected the woman's heart and the skin from that Asian shopkeeper spotting her upper ribs and around to some of her back was almost adorable._

_Okay, admittedly, they both could have done without the blood that took forever to clot here and there in other places they could see, descending into places they couldn't see under the border of her pants, but with a lot less obvious chagrin than the woman's co-worker._

_"...the sick part is we're getting used to this," Joan grumbled by the desk, under the assumption, most probably, that Jack couldn't hear her._

* * *

Smooth and thick writing paper, with fine ink in completely clear typing print was held aloft with cracked fingernails. The room was dark, but Bruce had been warned by his secretary of the guest in his office he hadn't had any former dated engagement with.

The door closed silently, hinges greased and beveled to perfection making this so.

Bruce made his way over to his desk to sit at his chair as the blonde woman remained leaning against the wall nearest his broad viewing window that looked out onto the city of wires and metal, Gothic architecture that would not crumble and the imposingly bleak sky that promised more rain and snow before the day was out.

"I don't recall Stephanie applying for this, so why the hell did it come for her in the mail?"

"Nice to see you too, Dr. Quinzel. Can my assistant get you some coffee or perhaps some tea?"

"You didn't answer my question."

Bruce sighed and took the paper from Harley, pretending he didn't notice the smell of hospital coming off of her in waves. Disinfectant the most potent scent beyond iodine mixed with blood hidden under her usual black longcoat.

"I felt that the work she is doing in school and her grade average steadily rising from where it was had merit. My reasons for choosing one student or another are arbitrary and have very little to do with the student signing up or anything like that."

Head tilt. And an eyebrow raise that Bruce was not ashamed to realized he had used himself on people he considered exceedingly stupid.

"So you're doing an end-run around the usual red tape and channels."

"That's a very ugly way to think of it, Harley."

"Yes, well, my mind came out that way after my second year in Arkham and will continue to be that way probably until I kick the bucket, so…I still want to know _why_ Stephanie. And don't lie or give me that bleeding heart bullshit. Why her and why now?"

Chair rolled back, hands clenched together, a smile that is not a smile.

"She's one of the only students at her current school and current grade level that are even trying, making an effort and getting better as she goes along. She's been known to help out other students and despite the incident last year—"

"You mean her getting knocked up by some little punk-ass that wouldn't take responsibility?"

"Yes, that. Despite that, she hasn't shown any signs of depression or slipping behavioral problems. I think the students at the Gotham Academy would be lucky to have her there."

"…There's more than that. I agree with everything you've said so far, but there's more—and don't tell me there's not, because you don't function outside of absolutes in certainty. You're too anal for that."

"The way I see it, I'm cautious enough to see any downsides before they happen."

" _Fine_. But she needs permission from a stable role-model in order to register there properly. Her father is sitting in a cell at Belle Reve for the foreseeable future—for which I am so very happy—and her mother still has another five months in rehab, plus getting a real job, plus, plus, also, doesn't this school require…what are they, uh…"

"Student-Teacher-Parent nights? Yes, they do. Every three to four months depending on the schedule and any outside events that could have negative impact on the student body."

"And who, exactly, will be able to do that for her? Again, criminal, D-List villain father and rehabilitating druggie mother."

"I was under the impression that you would do it for her."

Below Bruce's office at ground level, the sounds of a car horn blaring took up the silence, followed by what could very well have been screeching tires and the fire hydrant adjacent to one of the limousines of a visiting executive, that Bruce didn't like because he kept stealing Lucius Fox's parking spot, was hit and burst water up into the air, only for it to come back down on said executive as he stepped out of the limo. Batman would later look over the recorded security feeds of Wayne Enterprises and record the five minutes as a new ringtone on his cellphone for that particular pain in his ass. But much later, six hours from sitting across from Harley and trying to keep his face pleasant as her own went stony and she crossed her arms, right hand tapping her own shoulder in her irritability.

"…Did you, now? Why, on Earth, in Heaven or Hell, would you ever think that?"

"Her mother did sign papers for you to be her legal guardian for the time being until she could promise a stable home life for Stephanie, did she not? Now, what mother would sign over their child to _you_ unless they saw something most other people don't?"

"The kind that ran out of other options and had—has—no real choice. **_Duh_**."

"There's more to it than that, otherwise a foster family would have been called upon by the state."

"Okay, fine, I hate her husband and find him almost as repulsive as she does. She liked me enough."

"Plus there's also the homework you've been helping her improve, the friends she's been associating with that don't put her in the line of fire to turn into what her mother has become, or worse, like her father. The fact that you helped her get a job and get her baby adopted by a good family and went to her school to talk to her principal about things she could do to improve her grade point average—shall I go on?"

"I also introduced her to the Lord of Chaos that turned into her boyfriend and mistakenly got her involved in my shit-show of a life; your point is?"

"You've been there for her and you've been there for Jason, and I am pretty sure you will continue to support both of them if it means a better life. If that includes having to sit down and talk with inept teachers once every three to four months, I know you're gonna do it."

* * *

_"Alright, alright, I'll let you go now before some manic depressive slits their wrists while you're not looking."_

"Hah, very funny, Jason."

_"Well, to us it is; later."_

"Bye, love you."

**Click.**

And then the cellphone just flew out of Harley's hand and hit the wall with enough force that the back flipped open and the battery spun out; all parts hitting the floor with a crack and Harley herself covering her mouth with her hand as she ran out of the Arkham lounge back to her office.

Stricken panic from saying something—panic that forms after an epiphany or a realization that comes from only being completely clear of mind—that hadn't meant to be said had caused something of a hot-flash. Accelerated pulse and breathing, temperature rising—

The door to her office opened swiftly and shut in exactly the same way, but with a tremor in the wood that meant she wasn't controlling herself and the strength most people, on first sight of her, didn't believe she was capable of.

She took her shirt off and perched on the edge of her consistently open window to enjoy the snow flurries falling down from the darkened skies and let the ones that decided to cling to her melt. The clean water easily slid along the amassing clusters of scars and open wounds, soaking into skin grafts she would have preferred not to have for the sake of people that could have gotten better use out of them ( _but Leslie, Selina and Joan had all insisted_ ).

She had just been getting comfortable, breathing in and out slowly like a person coming down from a screaming fit, when she remembered that she never locked her door.


	18. But For Firewood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's begin with the word association part of the test: Sofa?

  
_-:-_  
 _…There is no answer. Only absurdity. And French Toast._  
 _-Lackadaisy Cats._

* * *

 

Harley was really starting to hate her goddamn sofa.  
  
It wasn’t that it didn’t do its job properly, it did, and very well given all the time Harley ended up on it trying to get comfortable stitching herself up and soaking it with blood at the same time. It suited the mood she’d been in over the last year _(morose, irritable, with on-again off-again depressive episodes)_ as well as personality in looking like a converted expensive funeral casket in black leather and blue throw pillows. It was good for sleep when she couldn’t relax in bed, didn’t tear all that much whenever the Babies and cubs jumped up on it to cuddle and sleep; it was easy to clean off whenever Jason had a smoke or Steph and Klarion had a little make-out session.  
  
It was just that more recently it seemed to send out a signal to the universe that invited people she _did not want to deal with_ to please, come, sit, sleep, be comfortable.  
  
Let’s see, to her knowledge, when she’d been around and not out at work, there had been:  
  
Eddie, uninvited, unfed and looking like a dead sewer rat after actually being of assistance to the police the first time he ever decided to visit.  
  
Cameron all bandaged and timid when Jason had set him down from riding bridal style in his arms, followed by Stephanie growling and whining about Klarion’s crazy, bitch-ass sister being a life-ruiner, Klarion unconscious and Bud and Lou bringing up the rear with Red Robin and some of the rest of his team, all carrying the food Stephanie had slaved over for hours only to be ruined by the witch boy’s sister and her pet owl. But injured parties had been as comfortable as could be expected, one being unconscious and other in an unfamiliar environment, enemies in a half circle eating Stephanie’s food so it wouldn’t go to waste with Jason leering, “Hey, could you do me a favor and claim sanctuary? That would really just top this whole thing off.”  
  
Joar coming to look for Cameron—different month, different incident. Poor Junior didn’t show up, thank Christ, otherwise he would have been met with Harley and Joar in a debate about parenting and about how damn skinny he was…  
  
Batman. Passed out. Bleeding real blood. Really not fair when she had to go find a stick to wake him up.  
  
Nightwing, Red Robin, Robin, Batgirl—which she really shouldn’t count, since, well, they’re pretty close to being her responsibility as well as Batman’s, so…yeah.  
  
Lanterns Jordan, Kilowog, Saint Walker, Arkillo, Karu-Sil, Tomar-Re, Razer and Aya, that Indigo woman, Carol and Sinestro and—to her lost temper and to his reason to never come back again—Guy Gardner… God, she hates them all.  
  
G. Gordon Godfrey, Iris West-Allen, Lois Lane—though, to be fair, _she’d_ brought them home with her so they could use the phone after she’d nearly run them over; the whole lot of them having been running through Gotham’s back alleys trying to remove themselves from the threat of Parasite chasing after them. She’d sent them the bill two weeks later for the coat the stupid, incompetent asshole had ruined when she’d gotten out of the driver’s seat and moved to pummel him into a dead end back lot because he’d dented her car’s front hood and he wouldn’t fight back since he was one of the few villains that knew just what a bad idea actually touching her was these days ( _interesting side note to that day was Lois eyeing Godfrey and Iris like they were insane for being actually friendly towards the “good doctor” while they waited for a taxi actually willing to venture anywhere near Harley’s neighborhood. They’d had some of Harley’s tea while they waited; the kind that she had **not** gotten from Jervis—pomegranate iced_ ).  
  
Creeper, which is becoming less annoying the more she just pretends he’s invisible with each new visit and each new bundle of flowers he keeps bringing wrapped in newspaper.  
  
Jason Blood, compliments of Klarion after he had broken into his favorite “uncle’s” loft and stolen a dangerous looking Egyptian text bound in what smelled like very old leather. Turns out he had been looking for a way to introduce the carrier of Etrigan to Stephanie for months and had given the book back with a grin immediately after Jason had choked out the words, “Wha…wha… when… how…GIRLFRIEND?!”  
  
Superman, once, waiting for her to show up from a seventeen hour shift at Arkham. He returned the pants his little ginger photographer had borrowed from Jason, thanked her for looking out for him and then congratulated her on what great kids she had before leaving through her open window. She felt too tired to be as creeped out as she probably would have been had she not been swaying a little and then promptly went to sleep in her bathtub.  
  
Martian Manhunter and his niece after Superman and Superboy told them to just wait for them there instead of wandering around Gotham while Batman and the rest of his brood were out in space with the fucking Lanterns dealing with some sort of intergalactic political emergency. The girl Harley didn’t mind since Red Robin introduced them properly around Thanksgiving when she needed help with making three turkeys and one pheasant as well as everything else _(a soft spot had developed for the teens the birdy kept bringing about, though the therapist of Arkham couldn’t admit it aloud)_ and let Miss Martian make the cookies while Red Robin helped her with the potatoes that Jason had wanted to just set on fire and hope for the best. The Manhunter, on the other hand, she had no experience with save for when she visited Mount Justice to have words with the batbrats. She’d pretty much walked in, been told what they were doing there and walked back out—she’d had to go yell at Jason for smoking menthols, anyway…  
  
Lawrence Crock looking for his youngest daughter while Teekl and Bud had been in the middle of their usual midday fornications, with Steph and Klarion in Harley’s bedroom doing worse. The first remark out of his mouth had him being chased out the window, down the fire escape, along the alley and smack into Green Arrow and the skinny blonde Sportsmaster had been looking for. She’d been happy enough to leave them to themselves…  
  
Half of Central City’s Rogue Gallery and their speedsters after what she referred to and chuckled over as the Reverse Rescue that had Len and his group looking for Kid Flash and Impulse after finding out Doctor Alchemy was doing a stupid thing in one of the East End warehouses. Digger, being himself, had made mention of what a dick Albert was in a very Australian way as well as flirting with Harley _(stopping just as she’d removed her longcoat and recoiled at her only wearing a training bra and bandages soaked through with blood along most of the rest of her bone sunken torso)_ while the speedsters sulked and tried not to look so humiliated or exhausted as Heatwave checked over the light chemical burns along Kid Flash’s ankles and upper thighs and Mark and Sam removed bits of glass and the like out of Impulse’s arms before they healed over untreated. Harley had been less than pleased to find Axel and Evan in her kitchen with the fridge open, letting perfectly good air out, staring at the wriggling maggots she had to apply to her back later, as well as the dead rabbits she was going to butcher and cook for dinner…  
  
Plastic Man, whom she assume came in because he’d heard about her finally deciding to accept another date with Creeper, and had been disguised as one of her throw pillows. He’d been found out by Bud and tried slithering around furniture away from his snapping jaws in-between asking her why she’d insisted on paying for the next date with the raving loon—apparently she’d actually gotten one of Creeper’s few friends worried, thinking about death traps and tricks and she had to prove what a nice person she was by telling Bud to drop the slippery idiot when the hyena caught his wrist, drew blood and wouldn’t let go. He seemed pacified until she’d told the cubs _(getting so big, teeth coming in more and strong on the rawhides they devoured within an hour of presenting them, easily)_ to jump on Plastic Man to see him out the door…  
  
The tiny child that it seemed was actually Captain Marvel _(that had not been fun, that had not been pleasant—it had taken her a week to fix the hole in the wall Black Adam had left in search of the boy and keeping him away from the scrawny runt had been a lot more difficult than she thought it would be, but at least her being insufferably rude had kept him occupied long enough for Superboy and Red Robin to show up and knock the jerk’s lights out)_ who she had to suffer a hug from once he woke up and changed back into the muscled powerhouse she was used to seeing from far, far away; her feet had dangled off of the floor and some of her stitches had stretched, but since he was actually a child she couldn’t yell at him and had to settle for gently shushing him when he attempted to almost-almost-almost offer up his secret identity as a sort of sorry-but-thank-you, “No, no, no. Stop. I don’t want to know. If you want to thank me, just remove Adam’s skeevy heap from the premises before he wakes up; sound good? **Great** , have a nice day…”  
  
Ma’alefa’ak for exactly three hours that would have been a lot more unpleasant had he not at least had a vague knowledge of her life and lacked telepathy _(though, to be fair, had he been able to try probing her mind he would have been met with the sturdy, and excessively pointy mental wall set up there to keep out intruders--assuming Psimon hadn’t warned him)_ and simply, _verbally_ with that voice of his that sounded so similar to his brother that she had to smile secretly at him even as it ground much more than J’onn’s did, and humbly asked if he could remain there until the sun set. She had agreed because she hated summer weather as well and gave him iced coffee in one of her more presentable China cups _(worn around the rim from too much use, but no cracks and blue rabbits fading away with their paint along the handles_ ) while she unloaded more ice into her bath and turned down the shades a bit more…  
  
And now, injured and breathing heavily, the window shut behind them and the heat actually being turned up for the first time in almost six months, were Aquaman’s guppy and Wonder Bitch’s little blonde.  
  
“Maybe I can send the sofa to Mick Rory for firewood…”  
  
Both teens looked at her with their eyebrows (well, Wonder Girl’s eyebrows, Lagoon Boy’s spiky-fin-skin things) drawn as she shut the door with her foot since both hands were full of groceries. All the ingredients for French Toast, as well as a gallon of milk and frozen yogurt she didn’t actually like, but both her legitimate and illegitimate doctors insisted on her at least attempting to have once a day for the supposed health benefits. The milk jug was wedged in its paper bag directly across from her stomach and kept her ribs and stomach cooled, which in turn made her more pleasant to be around than she normally would be towards uninvited guests sitting on her sofa and most obviously in need of first-aid and probably the use of her phone ( _in theory the merman could get through to Aquaman if the blonde king was on land looking for him, rather than under the sea—no, no, no, bad, bad images and sounds in her head; **bad** —or in one of the League’s gloriously pompous Towers_).  
  
“Let me put these away and then you can tell me what happened.”


	19. Water of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Names are given, names are taken, names can drive people crazy.

_-:-_

_Is this the language of Love?_  
_-Murder He Says, Tori Amos._

* * *

"Why do your... friends...in that apartment with the crazy super villain call me 'Vodka' every time we have to stop by there?"

"...I'm sorry?"

"The biker guy that gets yelled at every time he lights a cigarette and the blonde girl that's dating _Klarion the Witch Boy_! I know you know why they call people weird things-"

"Birdy."

"Thank you, Cassie! Anyway, why would they name me after a Russian beverage I can't even drink, let alone represent?"

Tim sighed, shutting the fridge door and, mixing the rest of his almond breve, moved back to his seat at the Cave's kitchen island. He really hadn't expected this when he got back from a mission in the Alps, but he'd heard about Lagoon Boy and Wonder Girl getting picked up by their mentors at Harley's apartment from a disturbingly amused Conner, so it seemed about right. He was actually a little amazed it had taken this long for the two to corner him when with most everyone else that visited, they hunted him down within hours to make him spill his unnatural understanding of the people there he'd come to recognize as friends and, sometimes, more than that.

But the nickname thing was getting old, if he was being honest.

"Okay, first thing: Harley isn't a super villain anymore, she's integrated back into social structures and the community. She's actually a very nice person, once you get to know her."

He raised his hand and held it to Cassie's mouth, stopping the inference to what Harley called Wonder Woman _to her face_ , before she could even make a sound.

"Her abrasive attitude is actually fairly new to her standing as a traitor to the villain enterprise as a whole and getting the _crap knocked out of her_ all the time by anyone and everyone who has ever had a problem with her and thinks she's fair game now. Do not judge her based on how she treats anyone who annoys her or happens to make _**sexual advances**_ of any kind towards Batman when he's **_still_ ** dating Catwoman."

Once Red Robin felt Cassie's mouth shut so hard her teeth clicked, he moved it back to stir his drink. He didn't believe in slut-shaming as a general rule, but he also knew she'd agree that Diana really shouldn't make a move on Bruce just because she thought she was better than Selina.

"...But you don't deny she's crazy," La'gaan pointed out, treading a little lighter.

"Eccentric. She's _eccentric_ , not...so much...crazy."

Which didn't sound all that much better out loud, but it was true and he wasn't taking it back, because that would be painting the picture too bright, which was like being misleading.

"Fine, whatever," La'gaan huffed, crossing his arms, "But it's the other two I want to understand. Why call me Vodka?"

Tim took a sip, thinking. He was a Bat, he was supposed to know the answers to weird questions, but this really wasn't something he'd thought to ask on. Jason and Stephanie were weird. Nice, but weird, and being around Harley for almost two years now only amplified it, and made understanding _(or the door into understanding)_ more difficult to find.

So really, the best he could do was pull the answer out of the vast confines of his basic understanding and hope that La'gaan didn't think he was just dancing as fast as he could.

"...Water."

"What?"

"Vodka derives from the word 'water' or the phrase 'water of life' or the implication of 'fire water'," Tim spoke, chewing the tip of his straw and keeping his voice level with the explanation as much as possible with both La'gaan and Cassie staring at him like he was some sort of Harvard law professor at the podium of a theater sized class, "As a rule, they give complimentary nicknames, not insulting ones. It's also one of the strongest brewed drinks in the world in a very double-edged sword sort of way; it can be good or bad for you depending on type and formula. It's not like they'd stoop to calling you Fish or something."

"Naw, Reddy Bird, that's for you and the other Bats and Birds," called a deep voice from the Zeta-transporter that failed to give a name and given clearance code to not one, but two beings entering. Tim groaned from his seat and pressed his hands to his face as the devil they had been speaking of practically jaunted into the kitchen proper with Lou behind him, food wrapped in tissue and foil in hand, or in a basket held by teeth in Lou's case; most likely prepared by either blondes that they lived with that were making an effort to make sure the Team didn't 'starve while Miss Martian was away, since none of the adults in their lives could be counted on to cook anything.

Also, most likely, so Jason could eavesdrop and then embarrass them.

La'gaan ignored the exasperation on Red Robin's countenance and turned a little in his seat to find the person they were talking about unwrapping the food he and the very scary animal just behind him _(that **wasn't** the one Wolf always made a point of trying to play Alpha around, he could tell, this one was nice and usually played nursemaid to his brother's cubs when they rolled around everywhere; as well as playing with Gar and Captain Marvel when Wolf wouldn't indulge in catching a thrown stick)_ had brought.

It was weird that he found the other not so very different from Nightwing, but more of a dark twin than a near, yet not quite absolute equal. He was a little younger yes, but La'gaan had seen him run across rooftops with similar efficiency, fight his way out of a problem that his mouth couldn't save him from, solve problems most normal people couldn't handle; those sort of things. Oh, and he and Stephanie weren't at all afraid of the way some of the people on the Team looked, La'gaan especially since the Atlantean had almost spent two minutes the first time they met just staring at how he'd pulled La'gaan up out of the fire escape window when he'd lost his balance and invited him and the others in for food when Icicle Jr. had been there watching Jason bang at a wall with a sledgehammer and no shirt on.

When Red Robin caught him looking back over his shoulder at the building when they'd finally left and was curious about his opinion on the other, basic sadness with unguarded understanding crossed Tim's face when La'gaan had asked why he hadn't freaked out at the sight of him.

_"You're a whole and healthy person, La'gaan. Jay and Steph are some of the few people I know that truly **don't** judge on appearance alone."_

_"Why?"_

_"They've lived in Gotham's bad districts their whole lives. And if you want to know real fear, talk to me after you've taken Dr. Quinzel to the emergency room and seen her naked for surgery. Or just at home in her bathtub, whichever comes first."_

He didn't ask any more questions about the people from Gotham anymore unless it really bugged him after that.

But with the stupid nickname...

"So what does it mean coming from you, Hood?"

La'gaan would be the first to admit that he also sucked at giving nicknames, especially under pressure of being so flustered, but he had to play the game and at least attempt to put Jason off balance. It was only _fair_ , Merlin's Beard!

"Why, it's very simple. It's short for something else entirely. Also Russian, but that's all you're going to get," green eyes creased with the smile that stretched, not unpleasant, but not overly sympathetic towards the way La'gaan was trying to puff up without actually lighting up his _(as Jason and Stephanie were want to call them with those exact same insufferably knowing looks)_ Atlantean tramp stamps, "Now who wants warm garlic rolls while I reheat the chicken and turkey?"

Despite the wanting to know and irritation, all three younger teens raised a hand, Cassie also going so far as to squeal, "Dibs!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for not up-dating in... wow, three months. Summer sucks for people who work in the service of other people. Especially if it's in a city RIGHT NEXT to the Canadian border with a carnival/fair stop. Hopefully I'll up-date once or twice a month from now on.


	20. Redundant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> High school, field trips, fighting and explanations are had.

_I live in the real world, you live on a higher plain, I appreciate that._  
_-Law & Order._

* * *

The first day of Stephanie going to the Gotham Academy, it became glaringly obvious to Tim, watching from afar like he did with everyone else he considered a friend, that she was not going to take any shit about being a scholarship student, or being mocked for where she came from.

Or wear those fucking skirts and let the teachers try and make her change her mind.

To be fair, the whole 'boys will wear pants and girls will wear skirts' thing was so wholly out-dated, sexist and stupid, Tim was a little unsure as to why Bruce allowed the "requirement" to continue. But, he had to say, watching a teacher introduce Steph to the rest of her first period class, try and bring up her having to wear a skirt after the next day and then watching to the old woman's face turn from an interesting shade of fire truck red to corpse white when the blonde gave her a sticky note was COMPLETELY worth not understanding.

He will admit, it was a little sick that he poked through the garbage for that note when classes were done for the day, but it's not like he cared once he read Harley's somehow perfectly legible hand writing explaining how easy it would be to sue the school for what qualified as sexual harassment and borderline-pedophilic voyeurism if they continued to bother Stephanie about the skirts. The pants were ordered from the school and paid for; _shut the fuck up about it._

This was followed by the _exact same_ message being found in all the other school teachers's trash cans.

Followed by it being printed on the school website the next day and about two-quarters of the other girls following the trend because it was just _so_ much more comfortable.

Lunch wasn't a problem for her. While the students weren't allowed to leave the school grounds for food, and Steph didn't find it prudent to join in on some clique so she wouldn't be The Lone Loser, he realized that this was planned. Because, sure as the bell rang and everyone else was headed for the lunch room or the stone tables along the grounds; Steph headed for the back along the brick wall where some of the trees made it easier for her to sit along the top and be joined by Jason and either _Cameron Mahkent_ (out of his usual frosty guise, of course, he didn't have a death wish if Harley found out and wrecked it for Steph) or **_Klarion_** who brought her lunch. Often it was some sort of meat dish with garlic rolls.

The first time one of the other students tried to give her a hard time, she noted that she wasn't breaking any rules, and drove it home by Bud lifting his head over the side of the wall to growl down at the upperclassmen. Whom ran away as fast as he could and didn't see Steph grin before feeding the jumbo sized hyena a piece of her meatloaf.

She was exceptionally good at science and phys ed; which _A)_ kept the usual bullies away because she'd proven she could cream them at dodge ball or blow them up with very few pieces of lab equipment and _B)_ meant that he was usually assigned as her partner.

He'd call that an _unparalleled success_ in reporting to Bruce that maybe, possibly, she could handle a normal life and be approached for taking up a training position on The Team the next time the League had a nomination meeting.

* * *

The trip to the Atlantean/United Nations Embassy was a real eye opener to Stephanie's take-no-shit attitude.

True, it scared the shit out of Tim when it happened and he's unlikely to look forward to any event similar happening again, but damn if it didn't give him some vindication in his hopes for the future.

The fact that Ocean Master, formally better known as Prince Orm of Atlantis before he got outed as being the miserable, jealous bastard that was leading the Purists in an effort to usurp the thrown from his brother, crashed in on the party going on was not all that unexpected to Tim. Bruce had actually made sure that he would have access to his Robin gear in one of the hidden rooms Aquaman had set up, but, much to Tim's chagrin, was too far away to get to without attracting attention from the other Gotham Academy students that were crowding as far away from the Purists and Orm as they could.

Despite the fact that Orm was obvious in trying to make his display of rounding up all the more fish-like students of the Atlantis Royal Academy to humiliate them publicly _closer_ to the humans. Tim could guess why, but would know more when Orm started grandstanding like he always did before news got to Aquaman or the Team itself.

It was more of the usual, even if it pissed Tim off to no end. Mentioning of the "MIΓAΣ"being as low as the humans that were scurrying away from the higher forms of life like krill from whales. Boasting that he could do as he liked and nobody among them would be able to do anything. Getting Tim riled up when he grabbed at a squid-looking young Atlantean, tossing him to the ground and lifting up his trident.

The Atlantean guards were down for the count. The human guards had been gassed well before that. Tim was out of reach to do anything, even as he was trying to press closer to the Atlanteans and maybe try to at least distract Ocean Master.

He considered himself lucky that at least he was close enough to see Ocean Master look rather surprised (and pathetic) when he found his trident grabbed from the bottom so he was leaning backwards like a ballerina and was spun around by his hideously long coat so he was suddenly facing the humans and away from his intended victim.

"...What?"

"There's really no need to act like such an asshole, Orm. Smug sadism doesn't really go with what you're wearing."

Ocean Master turned on his heel, teeth bared and found the young, very frightened Atlantean being picked up off of the floor and dusted off with little fear of the much larger and more dangerous villain by the blonde Tim had been keeping tabs on for weeks now.

Her back was to him, but Stephanie knew how to take care of herself in a pitch black alley in Gotham's slum districts. If Orm made a swift motion under the bright lights accented by the blue water fountains in the center of most of the hallways of this particular building, she could more than recognize the motion and, in Tim's opinion, get well out of harm's way.

"How rude," Ocean Master started up, looking to the younger Purists to tighten in around the other humans so that they ( _Tim_ ) were much more cut off from any aid that might come rushing in through other points of access, "One would think that a weak human would know to show a bit more respect to the true heir of the throne of Atlantis. Or at least be a little more afraid of backlash."

Stephanie, after giving the squid boy a light smile and making sure he was close to her back, finally turned around and looked at Orm entirely unimpressed. She reminded Tim much of that lioness queen in the Lion King surrounded by hyenas and he had to hide his grin at the image overlapping with ease in the comparison.

"You'll have to forgive me if I'm not afraid of you, Orm. I find it hard to be afraid of anyone that has set himself on fire, twice, while attempting to make _pop-tarts_."

Silence. The Atlantean students behind Stephanie, the squid boy, the human students and the Purists all looked, for lack of a better word, started at the way Stephanie answered. The Purists also had an air of absolute confusion, doubtless, because most of them probably didn't have a clue what pop-tarts even were.

"I've never-" Orm attempted to lie, lie and save face, but was interrupted by Stephanie rummaging around in her pants pockets and pulling out her phone, scrolling through her photo cache with ease and then holding the phone up where the so-called prince could plainly get a good look at a picture of himself. Himself in much plainer clothing, in some kitchen that looked very much like an underground bunker with too-bright lighting, his fine looking shirt sleeve on fire and a toaster off to the side of the counter flipped over with little flames of its own licking out of its open metal carcass.

Humiliation, shame, horror, disgust, all flashed across the Atlantean's face before settling, unfortunately, on absolute, boiling rage.

Tim silently and without attracting attention to himself, fiddled with the watch on his wrist that doubled as a recording device, both visual and verbal. He also noted that at least ten minutes had passed since Orm's group had broken in, five minutes since they'd put down the guards and added on another ten minutes since Orm started talking. The silent alarm Tim knew set off the minute Orm's biological signature passed through the entry points had probably gotten word to, at least, Red Tornado which meant that he was either already on his way or sent to the Team.

The Robin without his suit had faith in Stephanie that she could keep this going; words that wound without the up-start of real violence, and buy the others more time to get there before someone else got hurt.

He'd gotten to know her, and knew that she preferred talking to fighting and was damn good at it after all of her time with Harley and Jason and even all the people that had been trickling into her life for upwards of years now. Bruce even commented on that sort of ideology being a damn good skill in their own line of work that much more people needed more often than not.

* * *

"So, this is permanent?"

Queen Mera and Lagoon Boy looked positively wretched as Stephanie looked down at what constituted as Atlantean bandages along the arm she'd used to push back Orm's magic attack that he'd aimed at Topo when the poor young Atlantean had tried to bring down the pressure that had surmounted on Stephanie after she'd made a comment about how Orm was only dropping in uninvited to attract his big brother's attention, like the baby of the family that he was... "Until recently, of course."

Tim glared at the teacher that had been hiding in a closet until the cavalry had come along as well as the students that had kept backing up from the verbal and physical altercation between the super villain and their classmate and realize that they was a good reason both Steph and Jason considered the academy teachers "fucking worthless" and most of their peers "too dim to exist."

Speaking of Jason, he was sitting near the food bar that the Atlantean Embassy had set up before this shit-storm had happened, very close to where Tim was sitting as his own way of telling Tim he was glad that Wayne's ward had at least done what he could when hell had broken loose; "Grabbing a chair and using it for a weapon. Not very effective on Atlantean's, but an A for effort, kid." Tim had blushed and been able to actually take the moment to ask how Jason had heard what he was doing with the heroes that had crashed in when Orm couldn't take a high school student's much more brilliant come-backs.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting when Jason hesitated what he was going to say and simply answered, "News travels fast. Hero channels, Gotham underworld; it's practically the same thing."

Which Tim translated to mean that Jason had been with the Team, probably feeding them dinner, and followed with thundering wrath when the call came in from the Embassy alarm system. But at the moment they were surrounded by civilians and Jason was trying to be discreet. _Yes, good._

Tim would have grinned, faking shyness, but he was still focusing on Stephanie speaking with Mera and La'gaan as Kaldur and Garth continued to direct more guards that kept coming in from Atlantis to move out the Purists they, Conner and Cassie had brought down fast and hard. Conner and Cassie would probably wander over to Jason and Tim once the other, friendly but scared group of Atlantean teenagers were taken to zeta transport and the other human teenagers were out of sight, actually able to converse more open and friendly.

Topo wasn't leaving any time soon, either. He had stayed close to Stephanie when the skirmish had started in earnest, using his own magic the best he could against the purists, but it would have been for nothing if Stephanie couldn't hold her own to begin with. Being more fish-like than the Purist Atlanteans meant that this was probably the first real time he'd actually been on land, legs a little difficult to secure in running and jumping and he kept forgetting that he was a lot slower than in the water he had grown up in; which lead to his falling down often and making more of a target of himself, which was why Stephanie got hurt with magic to begin with.

He felt even more guilty when the heroes of Atlantis and the surface showed up and it became glaringly obvious that Stephanie and the exceedingly scary Jason _(who had come in like a tank and took out three of the much larger Purists without the use of the knives strapped to his legs and stuffed inside his leather jacket first thing, managing to scare the shit out of the younger, smaller Purists with ease)_ were the humans La'gaan often spoke of with affection as well as exasperation.

Now he hung back near Kaldur, back to a wall near the queen and where he would be able to walk over and apologize in earnest to Steph when she was done having her injuries looked over and have the...unfortunate...runes now engraved along her arm, magic burned into her skin, explained to her.

Queen Mera looked like she wanted quite badly to beat Orm unconscious a second time as she went about her continued answer to the blonde, "Yes, I apologize. If you were Atlantean I could have at least been able to hide the runes so that they wouldn't be visible to the naked eye with the addition of your own magic, but being human it wouldn't work. It might even cause bone damage."

"Friggin' scum buckets," La'gaan hissed under his breath, tightening his hands on his arms as they crossed and his sorcery tattoos glowing with his anger.

Mera made to admonish him, but Stephanie beat out any words she might have spoken, "I get it, you don't want to injure me, and that's okay, but I'd really like to know what it means if I'm gonna be wearing it for the rest of my life."

Topo and La'gaan visibly flinched where they stood as Stephanie said just the right thing to push the button between them that made them think of pain, abuse and trauma.

"It... It means Impure in ancient Atlantean," Mera spoke honest and lowly.

"Impure meaning something along the lines of trash, I take?"

"Yes, that's about right," the queen nodded, unable to understand how much saying so hurt, but having a vague kind of understanding from having students that had to listen to such words more often than she would have like in the royal academy.

"Huh. Cool."

The sound of heads whipping in Stephanie's direction at that statement was practically tangible from where Tim stood, Jason not tensing up like he expected, but face less impassive than it had been before Steph responded with all the ease of someone talking about possibly buying a kitten from the pound.

"I'm sorry," La'gaan practically choked out, completely disbelieving in the face of her casualness, "What?"

Stephanie seemed to understand the look on her friend's face and rubbed delicately on the bandages covering the sensitive, raw flesh underneath, smiling at him as she explained, "Trash has a way of being a very philosophic subject. I've been wanting to get a tramp stamp of my own for months and if I'm going to have one, I was always going to aim for something like that. You have heard the phrase, _'One person's trash, is another person's treasure'_ by now, right?"

La'gaan's mouth clicked shut when he realized it had been hanging open as Steph talked easily about something he had been thinking on since he'd been attacked in his youth and had his ankle marked with the exact same word Stephanie now wore, and that Topo had burned into the skin of his chest just a short while ago.

He nodded, though he didn't realize it.

"Then of course," Stephanie continued, "There's the chain of thought that everyone is trash, whether they might have been called so by someone else or called themselves such at some point. There's all sorts of different trash. Toxic waste, eco-friendly, recycling, high class, white, emotional, popular and so on. Isn't being labeled _trash_ and deciding what _kind_ you want to be for yourself better?"

Queen Mera, having absolutely never heard anyone she'd ever met think of those runes in a better light, found herself grinning at Stephanie and looking between the girl, La'gaan and Topo as both boys were tracing the outline of their own rune markings. Topo over the the skin tight shirt he always wore, like he was looking for a pendant or a necklace. La'gaan by leaning back against a nearby wall, crossing his legs and his toes tracing the leather cover he wore everywhere.

"And anyway, Vodka" Steph continued, directing her words entirely unto La'gaan now and earning his attention in its fullness with the nick-name, " _I_ like it, and that's all that matters."

The young hero who more often than not was with Mera's husband than with her _(his only being with her now because he was in the ocean off the coast of Asia assisting Martian Manhunter with something they'd found in the lower depths that would be keeping them both busy for weeks)_ seemed to look like he was going to say something in the affirmative, given that she'd gotten him to smile at that last bit, answered with something Mera was pretty sure neither she nor miss Brown were expecting, "Tell me why you call me that, and maybe I'll agree with you."

"You're going to agree with me anyway, but I'll throw you a bone. Vodka originates from Russian; short-hand for the old phrase meaning _Water of Life_."

From his spot next to Tim, as well as Conner and Cassie, all of them having settled down to listen in, Jason sighed; seeming disappointed that Stephanie was giving up their private joke so easily. Or he was letting out a huff of air like laughing, given that the look on La'gaan's face was amusing in and of itself; lips pressed together and eyes squinting at Stephanie like she was speaking a language nobody had ever spoken around him.

"What does that have to do with me?"

Stephanie sighed, good natured, "Make an effort, La'gaan. _Water of Life_ is **_redundant_ ** because water IS life; but life is ever-evolving, which makes it beautiful, which means..."

She paused a moment, giving the Atlantean a chance to answer.

Five seconds...ten seconds... Cassie sat up in the stool at the food bar she'd taken with a little gasp, but was stopped from saying anything by Jason pressing his finger to her nose and silencing her easy by tapping it a couple of times... Conner and Tim looked like they were reaching pretty deep to make a connection...

After another ten seconds, La'gaan raised his hands, speaking plainly that he had no answer and Stephanie groaned, heading over to where Jason was grinning and awaiting the punchline.

"Which means we've been calling you pretty, beautiful, handsome, etc, for months now, La'gaan."

She would later look up the color La'gaan turned from blushing was _'Peacock Green'_ and consider using it for the new paint she'd be applying to her apartment ceiling, but until then she would bask in the moment, La'gaan covering his face with his hands, Jason cackling, "That's my girl!" like a lunatic and chew on something that looked like fried octopus but tasted like chicken while she waited for Harley to come and pick her and Jason up.

It was either that or spend hours on the bus with the teacher she'd told to shut up on no uncertain terms when he'd tried to condescend to her about putting herself in danger to protect someone who wasn't even human. The teacher and the students would either ask annoying questions or sit in silence being a little afraid/in awe of her. Harley, in comparison, would just bluster about hating travelling to the ocean and make it fairly clear that Steph would, doubtless, be the one to tell her mother how she got the tramp stamp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, so sorry this took so long to up-date.


End file.
